


Moondrops

by Cloudy_Serendipity



Series: Poop Train Anecdotes [2]
Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Ambushes and Sneak Attacks, Angst, Awkward First Times, Betrayal, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Borderlands: Borderlands 2, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Destruction, Drinking to Cope, Explicit Language, Explosions, F/M, Gun Violence, Kidnapping, Relieving blue balls, Rescue Missions, Self-Pity, Self-Sacrifice, Sexual Content, Smut, Strangulation, Torture, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2019-09-16 18:42:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 23
Words: 26,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16959444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cloudy_Serendipity/pseuds/Cloudy_Serendipity
Summary: The ghosts of Maya's past come back to haunt her and Krieg's idea of a pick-me-up is a day-trip to The Arid Nexus.  Maya is kidnapped and Krieg fights to get her back, he really wants to save her.  That and The Little Man promised to turn his brain into mashed potato if he didn't.





	1. Memory Lane

**Author's Note:**

> Idea for this story came from the song Astronomy, by Blue Oyster Cult, or more appropriately the Metallica cover.  
> Borderlands and characters are owned by Gearbox et al but the angst is all mine. There are some superficial original characters I might play with in other stories.

Nothing was how he remembered.  What was once the Badlands, home of bandits, psychos and T.K. Baha, had become a toxic dump filled with slag and Hyperion scum.  It was broken now, like him; a faint memory of a time before Vaults, and Handsome Jack.

Fyrestone had been a piece of history, his history.  One that he wanted to share.

_Tell her it wasn’t supposed to be this way.  She needs to know what I was before…_

He shook his head to clear it.

_Before you._

The voice had a name once, long ago forgotten, like this place.  He was The Little Man now, and they were Krieg.

In the beginning there had been other voices.  But they were all quiet, squashed down or snuffed out by Krieg’s ‘big voice’, as he called it, the one that screamed aloud about blood and killing.  The Little Man alone had endured.

There was a kind of synergy between them.  Often an adverse one, but it worked; The Little Man was the voice of reason that stopped Krieg’s complete regression and Krieg was the strength that had kept them alive through, well, everything.

They agreed upon one thing:  the siren.

 

A fresh beer bottle slammed down as Maya leaned over the table.  She was drunk; too many firewaters in her belly and another precariously raised between her fingertips.

“To The Four Winds!”  She toasted, necking the shot, listing sideways as she plopped down on her stool.

The Four Winds Saloon was nothing but a glorified shack, dim, drab and dusty; exactly what you’d expect from something this far up the arsehole of nowhere, and the only place to get a drink for miles around.  Everyone was welcome, as long as you weren’t Hyperion, and there were plenty of those cretins around here these days.  Despite the perilous proximity to a stinking slag dump and a  huge Hyperion security base, the saloon was well occupied and the mood light.

_Four Winds?  More like four stenches._

Krieg was protective of her, which The Little Man said was a small mercy.  When it looked like she would fall, he steadied her by gripping her arm, too firm.

“I will build a castle out of your agony.” 

She shrugged him off.

_Don’t touch.  You’ll upset her._

The mask hid his frown.

 

Since that first time in Liar’s Berg, she’d solicited him to touch her once more.  The second adrenaline fuelled encounter as desperate as the first.  He’d revived her during the slaughter on Captain Flynt’s ship.  The glint in her eyes and her sassy smile had stilled his heart, right before she vaulted a stack of barrels and beamed up 6 of Flint’s rippers, casting them aside like leaves on the breeze.

After the battle, Clutching Flynt’s Tinderbox, she’d laughed, breathy and flushed.

_Beautiful.  Radiant.  Vital._

Stood against the capstan she’d taken his hand and taken her pleasure.  Gazes locked, as was his pleasure, to watch her come undone.  The way she broke, loosed and wild behind her storm-grey eyes, was like a mirror for his own plight.

When, weak-kneed and panting, she’d stroked her hand across the hardness throbbing against his pants, his brain and belly had tingled.  The Little Man had begged him to lay her down and make love to her.

“NO MEATSTICK TODAY!”  And “You will die one thousand times.”  Krieg had said through clenched teeth just to hear The Little Man howl and cry, and call him names like _imbecile_ and _nincompoop_.  It wasn’t until afterwards, still hard and needy, he’d learned the lesson of regret.

 

Maya was reinventing Krieg’s definition of good touch/bad touch, and he wasn’t sure of all the rules.  Krieg thought she made them up as she went along but The Little Man understood.  He always understood.  That’s why he lasted this long.

_Don’t drink that beer.  You need to stay sharp._

“STORMY LADY IS STARRY-EYED.” Krieg downed the bottle.  It had become a point of amusement that he defy The Little Man.  “I LIKE HER BURNING STARS.”

_Childish.  At least you didn’t call her ‘meat’._

Maya had no reply for him.  She had been different today; moody, distracted, aloof.  She occasionally tolerated some of the casual contact he initiated.  Today she’d accepted none.  Sighing, she scooped up another firewater and slowly tipped it into her mouth.

Krieg watched her.  The delicate line of her throat, her eyes closed and brows knitted against the harshness of the liquor, a scarlet flush in her cheeks.  The Little Man was thinking about kissing her neck and running his hands through her hair, remembering her moans of pleasure as she stood braced against hard wood of Flynt’s ship.  Just not his wood.

Low in his stomach the tingle grew until it was more a pleasant pressure.  Suddenly his pants became a burden.  The tightness had him riding the line of pleasant discomfort.  If he was lucky, she might be drunk enough to ask him to touch her again.  This time, he’d do what The Little Man asked.


	2. Drown the Pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Regret? Self-pity? Nothing a bottle of hard liquor can't fix, right?

Today was Maya’s Independence Day.  It had been one whole Athenasian year since her exodus from The Order.  She should be celebrating, but instead she’s drowning her sorrows with rocket fuel in a hovel in the middle of shitsville.

This morning she’d woke, stiff and sore, under the tarp canopy shelter Krieg had made against the side of their buggy.  Sleeping rough hadn’t helped her mood but the malaise that weighed her down was far from his fault.

“BLUE WANTS TO SEE A SPECIAL PLACE?”  Krieg had asked, supposedly to cheer her up.

“Sure.”  She mustered a scrap of interest, curious about his history.  “You drive.”  Anything was better than staying here.

 

They’d arrived in the busted up, toxic slag dump of Arid Nexus.  She knew the story.  This was the birthplace of the journey that lead to the opening of the Destroyer’s vault.  Legendary vault hunters came, fresh off the bus, and changed everything.  Where they went, destruction followed in the form of the Hyperion Corporation.  This place was no different.  In fact, it was worse.

Krieg had been disappointed.  They’d looked around Sledge’s old safehouse before heading to Fyrestone to find nothing but trash.  Even killing an entire pack of mutated skags didn’t pep him up.

“I need a drink.”  She’d said after Krieg had cleaned his buzzaxe in the fur of an only slightly mutilated fire skag.

 

Some of the township had survived the area’s transformation, hidden in a secluded canyon, surrounded by steep rocky hills.  It had been an old bandit camp before the locals came here to shelter from some huge Hyperion defence mech.  Now it was home to a harmonious mixture of bandits, old Fyrestone residents, and drifters like them. 

_Coming to this place was a fantastic idea.  What more could you ask for on a day like this than a depressing oasis in a toxic sea of soulless Hyperion capitalism?_

 

Maya had had it good with The Order, back when she was young and naïve.  She’d had everything she wanted, a nice home, money, servants, and a family.  She had it all… Except freedom.  But she hadn’t realised that until she was much older.  Now all Maya wanted was a safe place to sleep, something to eat, and enough money to ensure that death on Pandora wouldn’t be permanent.  She’d fallen a long way since her days as prodigy to The Order of the Impending Storm.

It wasn’t just the loss of her comforts that she lamented.  She’d killed a lot of people, many of them her friends, some she called family.  Each of them left a hole in her heart that she felt acutely.

_Why feel bad now?  You weren’t all that bothered until this morning._

Was she really the cold-blooded killer people said she was?  She wasn’t a naïve girl anymore, that’s for sure.  She was powerful.  A siren.  Made to wield the power she was born with, made for great things, supposedly.  She didn’t feel powerful.  She felt lost, broken, and pathetic.

 

The Four Winds was a large corrugated iron hut with and underground bunker-cave that served as lodgings for travellers.  There was a small bar at the back, manned by a woman named Suzzi.  It was cramped, filthy, musty, and most importantly, cheap. 

Maya had been working through a bottle of shine for the better part of an hour.  She’d lost count of the shots after the first ten.  What was the point in counting when she intended to have the whole bottle?

“Bitter bile to quench our thirst.”  Krieg had said when she’d offered to buy him a drink.  She assumed that meant beer and so far he hadn’t complained.

They drank in an awkward silence punctuated sporadically by Krieg’s lack of brain to mouth barrier.  Maya had to credit the guy, he seemed to have a knack of lightening the mood with his grim observations of humanity.  It was like poetry, psycho poetry.

“Pittiful people pray pathetically. Plead plentiful purposeless platitudes. Pumping, putrid panicky poop-parading pizzle-pilot.  Performer’s pickaxe pain.  Perfect.”  He cackled quietly.  It was almost a giggle, or as close to a giggle as a raging psycho could get.

Maya laughed, despite herself.   Resenting slightly that he’d forced her out of her macabre mood, even for a few moments.  She had no idea what he meant but somehow it fit.

Krieg had been trying hard all day to cheer her up.  His casual touches had only served to irritate her, she wasn’t in the mood to be cossetted.  He’d watched her closely, staring intensely one moment and looking all moon-eyed the next.  At one point he skinned a dead skag pup and used the blood-soaked head and pelt as a hand-puppet when he talked to her, prancing around like a pantomime character.

“We will create a meat-play.  Bloody torture and meat puppet pain.  AND I WILL BE THE MOST FANTASTIC SUPPORTING ACTOR!”

That one had almost made her crack.  The gruesomeness offset by a gesture of innocent fun really appealed to her inner darkness.

 

For now, Krieg was quiet but fidgety, playing with the bolts on his clunky vambrace.  He didn’t like being around lots of people.  If she was honest, she hadn’t considered what would actually happen with him in a confined space with other living souls.  It could have been a bloodbath.

This had to be hard for him.  The beers seemed to help, but not as much as her touch did, and she’d been a shitty friend today.

_One more thing you couldn’t do right._

In the corner by the bar an old clock began to chime.  It was the best-preserved thing in this whole damn place; a throwback from a bygone era.  No one had floor-standing clocks these days.

“TWELVE O’CLOCK!”  Suzzi yelled before yawning into the back of her hand.  She was a big woman, all bust and hips with a tiny waist.  Frizzy yellow hair, forced into ringlets, framed her perfectly round face.  “Y’all best be making your ways home naaaawwww…”  She stifled another yawn.

Snoozy Suzzi she was affectionately known as, for her ability to doze on a bar stool at all times of the day and night, and for her perpetual yawning.   Apparently, she was Moxxi’s second cousin, whoever Moxxi was.

 

Maya stood, swaying on her feet.  A peaceful numbness had stolen over her somewhere around the half-bottle mark, and the rest had probably just killed brain cells.  The feeling of emptiness she’d had all day hadn’t gone but was more fluffy than sharp, and the faces of her dead friends were just a blur of colour and a feeling of belonging, barely remembered.  Mostly all she felt now was tired.


	3. Anticipation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Krieg and The Little Man come to an understanding, and Maya takes Krieg to bed.

The room that Maya bought was nothing more than a small cave hewn from the rock and dirt under the saloon.  There was a shabby curtain strung across the opening for privacy and a stained old mattress covered in a blanket sewn from the tattered pieced of other blankets to sleep on.  From other alcoves Krieg could hear the drunken snores of the other guests, luckily his mask filter kept away their stink.

_Sleeping out by the buggy would have been better.  This is no place for Maya to sleep._

 

When Maya had taken his hand and lead him down the stairs to the underground shelter his heart had stuttered and The Little Man had started his rambling.

_She’s drunk.  She’ll never forgive us.  She’ll leave us.  It’s immoral. It’s wrong.  You’ll hurt her…_

“TOO MUCH NOISE FROM YOUR PIE HOLE!”  Krieg had growled.  “I WILL MAKE YOU BLEED!”

Krieg followed behind her, watching the unsteady sway of her hips as she staggered to the end of the row to the only open curtain.  He traced her blue markings with his eyes, from where her hand grasped his, up her slender arm to the round of her shoulder and disappeared under the edge of her tight tank-top.

“The blue is everything?”  He wondered how much of her was marked.  He’d only ever seen her arms and a small part of her hips and the tops of her thighs when she’d shimmied her pants down to accommodate his hand between her legs.

She laughed, light and melodic.  It was the most beautiful sound, like rain quenching a desert thirst, or the first bird song after an earthquake.

Curtain drawn, she pushed him down onto the mattress.  He barely fit but even The little Man didn’t care.  He was silent for once, watching with awe as she straddled Krieg’s hips, hands braced on his chest.

Krieg was breathing heavily, heart hammering in his chest.  He’d been hard since she took his hand.  All The Little Man’s remembering of her in ecstasy had his blood on a fast track to his cock.

Without thinking, he obeyed the instinct of his other, sliding his hands up her arms and into her hair.  She closed her eyes and sighed, a small smile playing on her blue lips.

She leaned forward, drawing closer.  He opened his mouth, longing to taste her, hips rising from the mattress to create friction against the warmth between her thighs.

Her forehead met with the side of his mask and slid down into the crook of his neck, then there was stillness.  Her breathing evened out as she sagged fully against his chest, arms curled up between them, legs still spread across his aching groin.

Krieg realised he’d been holding his breath.  Anticipation had a way of doing that to you.  The light skip of his heart was something he’d only ever felt for the squirt and splash of fresh blood.  The thrill she gave him tasted inside like the prelude to murder.  She quieted the brain itching urge to kill and ignited the slow burn of longing.

_She’s power and punishment.  Deadly and beautiful.  She could have killed us with her mind, but instead she chose us to walk her path._

The Little Man had always fought Krieg’s murderous nature.  This new comparison of the twisted emotions Krieg felt for gore and death reconciled with The Little Man’s feeling of love and lust.  He finally understood how Krieg felt how he felt, if not why he felt that way.

_Kill bad guys as much as you want.  I’ll stay quiet.  But you don’t kill innocent folk.  And if you harm Maya I’ll shred your brain until it dribbles out of your ears and the only thing you can remember is the pain that made us._

“PUREED BRAIN AND TERRIBLE PAIN!”  Krieg shouted loud enough to gain one or two shouts of ‘shut the fuck up!’ from the other guests.  Maya, however, didn’t stir.

Krieg shifted enough to slip his hand into the front of his pants to adjust himself, but left her where she was, a pleasant weight atop of him.  He savoured the tight discomfort growing in his balls.  Pain was good, it let you know you were still alive.  The Little Man would have argued that this kind of pain was definitely not the life-confirming kind. 

With thoughts of blood splashes colouring the glittering grey stars in the siren’s eyes, Krieg drifted into sleep.  The Little Man had enough control to position their arms around the sleeping beauty before he too submitted to blackness.


	4. Fight and Flight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They come in the night with guns and gas, on a mission to abduct the siren. Krieg paints the halls red.

Krieg awoke to a strange hissing noise.  A diffuse and pearly light permeated through the curtain, dimly illuminating the rough-shaped opening.  Maya was still a warm weight on top of him, just as she had been when he fell asleep, breathing slowly.  He blinked a few times to clear the fog of sleep from his eyes only to realise that it wasn’t his eyes, the room was actually full of smoke.

_It’s a fire!  We have to get out of here!_

The Little Man panicked too easily.  Krieg was in no danger of suffocation, his mask filter would see to the smoke, but Maya wouldn’t be so lucky.  He tore a strip from the blanket and tied it around her face, listening for any signs of fire or panic from the guests.  Everything was silent except for that weird hissing.  He moved to sit up, shifting Maya roughly.  Her body felt sloppy like a blood bag, she was still out cold.

There was a small cough from somewhere along the row, and the shuffling of feet. The curtain twitched right before the metallic clink and roll of a canister told him there was no fire.  It rolled into the first with another clink, doubling the hissing noise and filling the alcove with even more smoke.  Krieg could feel it prickling his eye, making it water.

_It’s poison gas.  Hyperion have come to clean out the rest of the people here.  We have to get Maya and run.  Fight your way out!_

Krieg scooped her up, effortlessly throwing her over his shoulder.  Shotgun drawn and battle-cry loosing from his throat, he tore down the curtain and stepped out.  The whole bunker was filled with smoke, but he could see the shapes of several people, weapons raised, waiting for them.

He ran headlong down the corridor, firing at everyone who tried to stop him, ducking and dodging attacks from all sides.  One man tried to grab Maya but Krieg smashed his fist into the mans face so hard that upon contact with the wall his bones crunched and Krieg’s gauntlet got snagged on the man’s crumpled skull.  Krieg cackled with glee.  This was what he loved best.  His only regret was that his gore maiden would miss the whole thing.

“NOW LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE!”  He boomed.  “I’M GONNA MAKE NEW PLACES FOR YOUR FACES!”

All the blood, warm and sticky, splattering up the walls, on the floor, on him too, was glorious.  Deep reds, bright reds, some lumpy, some frothy, some with bits of bone mixed in.  He laughed loudly, hardly stopping for breath as he cleared his way up to the bar.

Whoever they were, they weren’t Hyperion.  Unless Hyperion now hired men in frocks.  Either way they were all meat for the cleaving and Krieg loved to butcher.

A bullet in the back spun him around and then there was pain.  Gut-wrenching, nerve-searing agony.  His body felt like it was being ripped apart, skin torn from muscle, muscle from bone, and bone being fused with molten metal.  He dropped everything as his knees buckled.  Yellow shockwaves coursing through his body, twisting his stomach, making him puke in his mask.

_GET UP!  Get up, you have to, you just have to…  Tell them you surrender.  Tell them to stop.  Tell them anything, just save her!  You must save her!_

One of the frock-men was dragging Maya across the floor towards the door.  He wore a filter mask over his mouth and nose, they all had them on.  Krieg fought against the yellow and against the blackness that had already begun to creep into the edges of his vision.  A pair of legs was now all he saw, yellow splashes like artfully applied abstract paint ran up underneath a knee-length skirt.

“Kitty, come!”  The man at the door said firmly.

“He didn’t die.”  She sounded young and disappointed.

“There’s no time.  Come, now!” Beseeching, urgency agitating his tone.

Krieg succumbed to the black, but not before the yellow girl pulled off his mask.

“That should keep you down for a long nap.”  Her giggles faded until there was nothing but the distant howling of The Little Man, and seconds after, not even that.


	5. The Bargain

Her head felt like a clutch of flame threshers had burrowed into her brain and were slapping their tentacles around, setting her nerves on fire.  She burned all over, a throbbing heat that made her whole body ache like she’d been in a train wreck again.  She felt stiff and her neck was killing her.  What the fuck had Krieg done to her last night?  She couldn’t remember anything other than moonshine and melancholy.

Maya couldn’t quite move yet, but she was gradually becoming aware of her surroundings.  Krieg was gone, she couldn’t feel his warmth, and the sleeping space felt a lot bigger than it did last night, but then again, she was wasted.  The sounds were different too, and she heard distorted voices.

“No, no, no, No, NO!” The comm crackled, and then there was a long, frustrated sigh.  “Look, I gave you the information, the detainment device and safe passage through the Badlands.  All you have to do is bring her to me for one itsy bitsy favour then she’s all yours.”  The voice trailed off into a sardonic chuckle.

A cold tickle crept over her scalp.  She knew that voice but couldn’t put a face to it.  The fire in her head burned it all away before she could form the image.

“And you give me your word you won’t harm her?  I’ve heard stories…”  A worried voice, eerily familiar, but once again drawing nothing substantial from her memory.

“Listen….”  Charismatic persuasion oozed through the speakers. “We had a deal, and I’m nothing if not a man of my word.  You bring the siren to Overlook, it’s already updated on the Echo device I gave you.  Bring her there.  She does one little thing for me and you are all free to leave Pandora, I’ll put you on the transport myself.  How’s that sound?  Can you do that for me, Sophis?”

Her heart jolted in her chest, lifting the lead from her limbs.  Panic flooded her system as she struggled to sit.  The pain in her head now secondary to the adrenalin-sharp need to flee.  Her eyes throbbed badly enough that she barely trusted what she was seeing.

The inside of the Hyperion communications bunker was stark and bright, clinical almost.  She smelled ozone and electrics, and festering slag.  At least she was still in the Badlands.  And there, hunched over the comms array was a silhouette she’d thought she’d never see again.

“Sophis?”  The disembodied voice was getting angry.

_This can’t be happening.  This has to be a bad dream.  You’re dead.  I killed you myself._

The whole day yesterday she threw herself a pity party, regretting the things she did during her exodus from Athenas, lamenting the loss of those she once held dear.  But now, faced with a very possible reality that she’d have to go back to that life, she knew in all certainty that she didn’t want it.

“A deal’s a deal.”  Her old guardian said.  “And Jack… She better not be harmed.”

_Jack?  Jack, as in Handsome fucking Jack?_

Rage and recognition boiled up inside her.  Teeth gritted, almost growling with fury and hate, she rolled to her knees, reaching out, feeling her power seethe and spread through her body.  Pain exploded inside her skull.  All her power redirected inside, crushing her consciousness down into a tiny pinpoint of light, like seeing everything through a pinhole.  She tried to speak but only screams came out.  The pain consumed her completely until the only thing that fell from her horribly contorted mouth was silence.


	6. Intentions

The device had been effective. Say what you want about Handsome Jack, but the man knew his sirens.  Had The Order possessed one of these detainment collars years ago they wouldn’t be where they were today, scattered, broken, and weak.  Sophis aimed to fix all of that.

 

Her screams had been his first clue that she was awake.  He’d been distracted and in the end,  it had been Jack’s insistence on the use of the collar that had saved his life.  Watching her writhe in pain had been both horrifying and satisfying.  A penance for all of the people she killed when she turned her power against The Order.  He’d never felt the pain of her phase-lock but when she’d beaten him to within an inch of his life with a wrench, he’d felt pain enough.  They weren’t even, not by a long shot.

 

Sophis had waited at the rendezvous for the rest of his party.  Less than half of them had survived the psycho, many of those were badly injured.  The intel hadn’t exactly been bad, but it had been lacking somewhat.  The news that Maya had been traveling with a psycho had been something he’d found difficult to accept.  He questioned whether she herself had went mad, or if she was somehow controlling the thing with her power.

The knock-out gas had been a good idea.  What he hadn’t thought of was the possibility that Maya’s companion wasn’t completely crazed, that he was cognisant and calculating, and that he was a goddamn badass.  It had been a bit of a gamble, all-in-all.

There had been a moment in the saloon, seeing that hulking form emerging from the underground guest quarters covered in blood and laughing maniacally, when Sophis thought he might die there in that filthy hovel.

Thankfully, Kitty successfully subdued the freak and secured their getaway.  Unpredictable and untested as she was, she had acquitted herself very well in this, her first mission.  Sophis had felt pride enough for the girl, but disappointment too - his plan had been to leave no survivors.  She was not yet fully into her power, and she was no Maya.  She let her pettiness get in the way of her growth.  Her function within the order was merely a filler for the emptiness created by Maya’s betrayal.  She was a blunt instrument where surgical precision was needed, a pretender to the throne, so to speak.  She believed that they were bringing Maya back to Athenas for trial.

Lies were necessary.

 

“We’ve lingered too long.”  Sophis stared past his obedientiaries, a vacant expression smoothing the worry from his face.  “Gather everyone, we begin travel soon.  I want the wounded escorted by the able-bodied.  I will travel in the vanguard.”

Overlook was a few days away.  They could fast travel some of the way in small jaunts but the rest they’d have to drive and walk.  Hyperion provided a caravan of heavily armoured trucks which would arrive by mooshot in The Highlands Outwash, it would be slow going to get to Overlook through the hilly terrain.  From there they’d be transported to the Hyperion moon base on Elpis.  Jack could have his ‘little favour’ and they’d be on their way home to rebuild their lives and elevate The Order to its former glory.

Sophis looked at the two sirens.  Kitty was in a deep sleep brought on by fatigue, whereas Maya had been shut down by the restraining collar – her sleep was an unnatural sleep, almost coma-like.  There was pity there, he could feel it tickling under the surface like tiny fish glinting in the shallows.  Soon it was overshadowed by anger, roiling and thundering through his veins, snuffing out his weaker emotions.  The Order would be victorious, in this and all else.  Maya would bend to him eventually and then they’d take what was rightfully theirs, starting with Athenas.


	7. This Little Piggy Went to Market

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Krieg's new mask is the 'Long Live the Meat' skin. He definitely misses his old mask but this one makes him feel more powerful.

Krieg cracked his knuckles and grinned through the grating of his new mask.  He looked like a scrap-metal king-knight who had made a crown-mask out of a train’s bull bar.

“I WILL WEAR YOUR SKIN FOR MY ROYAL CAPE!”  He bellowed, spittle flying through his mouth guard and splashing against the cheek of his captive.  “SPEAK!”

The monk flinched as more spittle hit his face, but he remained silent with his eyes screwed shut as if not seeing the horror in front of him would somehow stop it from becoming reality.

_Ask him who he’s with.  Where they’re taking Maya.  Ask him what they plan to do with her._

The Little Man was frantic, almost as crazed as Krieg was on a quiet day.

“Shut it!  I ask the questions…”  Krieg growled to himself, pacing back and forth just inside the doorway of T.K. Baha’s place.  He swatted at the prosthetic leg hanging from the light fitting before bending over the frock man.  “The blue lady will be free, tell me where or I’ll gut you like a fish and use your corpse as a meat puppet to get what I want.”

What came out of Krieg’s mouth was close enough to what The Little Man had been thinking.  They were both a little shocked.

The monk’s eyes flickered open and flew between the body of the one brutalised before him and the huge form above.  He whimpered as Krieg pulled a knife from his digistruct pack.  The glinting steel was cleaner than Krieg liked, everything looked better in red, or blue.  He drew the flat side down the monk’s arm almost seductively as if charming his very blood.  Upon reaching his pinky finger Krieg angled the blade to cut, watching intently as fear overwhelmed his captive.

“Athenas!”  The monk squealed.  “We’re going back to Athenas.”

_Planet Athenas?  Of course, they’re The Order of the Impending Storm.  Where’s the ship?_

“On what wings and winds do the storm men flee?  Divulge thy secrets, then be free.”

The monk looked mightily confused, snapping out of his moment of fear.

The Little Man groaned.  _The intimidating lump of psychotic rage that you are is perfect for this job.  Why would you choose to pull the pin on a poetry grenade right now?!_

Krieg cackled and let the weight of his hand carry the blade through the frock-man’s finger.  It made a dull tap as it hit the dusty floor a millisecond before the screams began.  Krieg loved it when they sang to him, it soothed him, but not as much as his blue woman.

The monk struggled against the cords that bound his wrists to the arms of the chair.  Blood flowed slowly from his wound, slicking the wooden arm.  Krieg dipped his finger in the glistening red and drew a moustache on the frock-man.  He looked more like a man now but was still wearing a dress.

_He’s a monk.  They wear robes - a cassock.  Not that you know what that is._

“WHERE DO THE STORM MEN FLY?”  Krieg growled.

The monk was choking on his tears.  Krieg smacked him across the face with his unarmoured gun hand, stopping the sobs momentarily.

“QUICK-TELL BEFORE ALL THE LITTLE PIGGIES RUN AWAY FROM HOME!”

“I-“  Gulping for air the man struggled to speak.

“ **QUICK-TELL!** ”  Krieg screamed, brandishing the blade once more.  This time it looked prettier, the frock-man’s blood streaked red along the steel made Krieg’s innards giddy.

Panic filled the man’s eyes as he struggled harder, pulling the ropes tighter against his already bruised skin.  “Please!”  He sobbed, gargling through fresh tears and snot.

When the man paused too long Krieg brought more pain.  The man howled in agony as the next finger was cut off at the third knuckle.  Krieg didn’t butcher like he wanted, he took his time, making sure he only cut the one finger, making sure it was a clean cut.  He chuckled as the man pissed himself.  The sour smell of urine rose as the stream of it seeped through the seat of the chair to patter on the floor.  It ran until it mixed with the blood and run away piggies on the dusty floor at his feet.

“What a pretty picture.”  Krieg said absently.

_Ask again!  We need answers.  The longer this goes on the further away she gets._

“You make me ask again, frock-man, and I cut them all off.”  Krieg loomed, feeling the happy twitch of his mouth at the thought of all the extra blood.  “Where is the siren?”


	8. The Blind and The Belligerent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maya tries to reason with her captors but her fate is set. They are but lambs to the slaughter.

Kitty sat by the fire, staring.  Maya could tell she was exhausted.  Their short passage through The Fridge had been eventful, and scary, if Maya was at all truthful with herself.  The monks of The Order were ill-equipped to deal with the creatures that lived there and had relied heavily on the young siren to clear their path.  Maya had tried to help the girl, but she was stubborn and petty, failing to see that Maya’s only interest in this was her own survival.  It was reason enough to trust the help offered in a time of crisis.

They’d made it to the transit point that lead to The Outwash and passed through.  Maya knew where they were.  She’d never been this far but she’d seen it listed in Krieg’s echo – he’d been here.  She hoped he survived the attack at The Four Winds.  Kitty had been forthcoming in telling Maya that she’d zapped him with her ability, and as far as she could tell, it was strong enough to kill an average man.  But Krieg was far from average.  He was huge, strong and very good at ignoring injuries.  Hell, if Hyperion couldn’t destroy him then what chance did a young slip of a girl have?

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”  Kitty spat bitterly, hate burning in her eyes.

Maya came to her senses.  She hadn’t realised she’d been staring back.  In the growing gloom tiredness was seeping into her bones and it was easy to lose focus, to zone out.  The collar around her neck made her brain fizz like a can of soda, bubbles trapped inside, tickling around the inside of her skull.  She couldn’t sleep even if she wanted to.

 

Night fell completely.  They waited in the warm glow as, two at a time, the group arrived this side of the jump gate from The Fridge.  Sophis had been cautious about how they travelled.  It was wise not to be too splashy in lands like these, Hyperion weren’t the only big bad out there, and they certainly weren’t the worst.  Once they were all assembled Sophis sent the signal.

Maya watched as the giant H in the sky fired up it’s central cannon.  Everything from aid and equipment to giant mortars and battalions of troops could be sent via moonshot.  She’d heard their plan, seen the maps, she knew where she was going but she didn’t think Sophis saw the flaw in his plan.

“Jack won’t give me up, you know.”  She said quietly as she sat hugging her knees.  “And the girl, he’ll take us both.”  Maya glanced at Kitty who was now curled up on her side, fast asleep, along with most of the party.

“I have his word.”  Sophis considered her a moment before turning back to his map.

“Sirens and vaults.”  She dug her heel in the dirt absently.  “The man is obsessed, and he won’t rest until he’s opened them all.”

“You think that’s the favour he wants?  To open his vault?”

“I think he wants me to charge the key, all of the keys, if I survive the process.”  Honesty was her best policy here.  Sophis wanted to take her back to Athenas but Jack would drain her dry and throw away what was left.  She knew what one she preferred.

“Eridium charges the keys, he has plenty.”  He dismissed her with a flick of his hand.

“Eridium is the catalyst, the source of a Pandoran siren’s power.”  She had to make him understand.

“But you’ve never been exposed to it until you came here.”

“Exactly!”  She shuffled forward, fixing him with an intense look.  She hoped she could convey that she was genuinely scared of what Jack could and would do to her.  “Imagine a siren who didn’t need Eridium to use her power.  Imagine how much more powerful she’d be if she reacted to it as sensitively as I do.  Now imagine two of us.”

“What are you saying?”  He crouched close, invested in her words.

“I don’t get my power from Eridium but I feel it all around me.  It’s in the ground, the air, and every living thing exposed to its radiation.  I’m so much stronger here than I was back on Athenas, Sophis.  So much stronger.”  Her eyes gleamed with tears not yet fallen.  “You’re about to deliver him _two_ sirens.  Kitty and me.  Once he sees her, he’ll take her too.  She’s so young.”

The tear that slipped her lashes dropped hot on her cheek then began to chill.  She was scared for herself but also for Kitty, bitchy and angry as she was.  She cried because she was helpless, cried because she was alone again, and cried for the life she wanted but would never have.

Sophis seemed to consider her words, his eyes flickering as though the visuals of all she’d said were playing in his head.

“There are other ways off Pandora.  I don’t want to die in one of Jack’s facilities, Sophis.  I’ll help you get us home.”  She practically begged him with her tone.

“You always did have me wrapped around your little finger.”  He smiled wistfully.  “But not anymore.”

Sophis raised the control for her collar, ready to zap her into darkness when the loud THUNK sound heralded the moonshot’s penetration of the atmosphere, then the ground-shaking boom of its landing.  Four more, just like the first, landed at the bottom of the steep hill where they’d made camp.

Maya sighed.  Relief, no matter how short-lived, was relief nonetheless.

 

After the first moonshot the whole camp scrambled to life.  It was still dark, and would be for another few hours, but the monks began packing up and gathering themselves together.  They sent a scout party to check the landing area for bandits and creatures, clearing out what they could they sent for the rest.  It took them a little while to mobilise what with their wounded and all, but by the time the first rays of the first sunrise brightened the sky they were all packed into the armoured trucks and ready to go.

Maya though of Krieg.  He loved to watch the stars.  Would he have sat on some high precipice in the abandoned wastes, looking at the stars through the true night of Pandora, and wondered if she saw them too?


	9. Against Nature

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Krieg plays catch-up and he fights his nature to stay on track.

The mountains in The Highlands were treacherous but beautiful.  The scenic rise and fall of the land was like breaths laid out in dirt.  Krieg knew better than most not to trust pretty things to only be pretty.

He’d saved a lot of time in his pursuit, traveling directly to The Highlands.  He’d been here before, saved it in his ECHO, in another life it seemed.  He knew the land was savage but he liked it that way.  Brutal and unyielding.

Krieg skidded down the loose shale and rocks on the far side of the mountain.  Ignoring the winding path that would eventually take him to the Catch-A-Ride, he took the direct route, dropping from a rocky shelf onto another steep slope he rode his boots down as if he were surfing a big wave.  His last few metres were a tumble but he rolled to a stop in the ditch by the worn-down vehicle station.

_Rocket buggies.  That’s what she likes.  And they auto-lock onto targets.  Get the rocket one._

The Little Man had been very quiet.  He agreed that this was what Krieg did best and only spoke up if he thought he was going to be of value.  There was a finality about the silence of the other in his head.  Normally he would succumb to the roar of his blood pounding in his ears, screaming at him to kill and rip and murder, but Krieg was singularly focused.  He would save his blue woman and kill as many frock-men as possible, but not before he knew she was safe.  The Little Man Approved.

 

Krieg kept mainly to the road.  The sandy dirt near the coast was strewn with the carcases of rusted old bandit buggies long ago destroyed.  The whip and snap of tentacles confirmed the danger as one huge shock thresher erupted from the ground by the road, attracted by the vibrations of his vehicle.  His blood burned for the kill, just a few rockets to spread glistening flesh across the dirt, just a few shots and he’d drive on.

_You kill that one and the whole clutch will surface, then we’ll end up walking to Overlook if we’re lucky.  If we’re unlucky, we’ll be dead like those bandits.  God knows how far their tunnels stretch._

“I WILL MAKE SUCH BEAUTIFUL DEATH!”  Krieg’s shout turned to a cackle as he directed the buggy inland.  “MONKS AND MURDER AND MEAT FOR THE SALTING!”

 

It went against everything he was to drive away from the chance to kill.  The promise of blood and blue in his future moved his focus ahead to Overlook.   He wasn’t far out now, hurtling recklessly across cracks and holes in the road, detouring down a crag with a running stream when a Hyperion cargo truck came into view.

All this sneaking about made him restless.  His bones itched and his mind raced, picture reels of a story he’d not lived yet; of Maya lost or dead, himself in chains, tortured and experimented on.  Wait.  He’d lived that part already, hadn’t he?

_They’re likely to just kill us rather than try to capture us.  The monks of The Order have no use for someone like us.  We’re feral to them.  Uncontrollable._

“PRETTY-FACE MOON MAN WANTS THE BLUE KEY.”  Krieg growled.  He always answered his other aloud.  “ANGELS DIE FOR HIM.  KEYS UNLOCK ONLY DEATH AND DISAPPOINTMENT.”  Agitated now, he waited for the truck to pass.

_You’re not wrong.  It makes sense that The Order would need help to extract a powerful siren from a place like Pandora.  Maya wouldn’t just surrender to them, and Jack would need a low-key approach, something under her radar, to get close.  You’re smarter than you look._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On fast travel: One can only fast travel to places one has already discovered on foot, hence why Krieg is able to make good time and catch up to The Order, who had to make the majority of their journey on foot.


	10. Overlook

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Order arrive at Overlook and use the beacon to signal the Hyperion moon base. Maya has a word for what's about to happen... Clusterfuck! She tries to worn them but do they listen?

The steep slope leading up to the plateau of Overlook lay ahead.  The path was barricaded, no vehicles could pass higher than the lower slope, and their convoy of Hyperion trucks had further barricaded the path.

Maya trudged forward in Sophis’s wake.  Her wrists were bound in front of her, a token gesture.  Her real shackle was the chunky silvery collar that looked more like space O2 tech than something that could kill her.

There was no Hyperion presence that she could see but that didn’t mean there weren’t any troops or bots at the top.  The homes on the slope were run down and unoccupied, some had lost their roofs and some were missing whole sections of wall.  There had been some intense fighting here a long time ago and now the place was a shell.

At the top there were a few small signs of life:  a functioning med vendor, washed clothes flapping in the breeze up on a balcony, a small window box herb garden that was still well tended.  All the homes were locked up tight, corrugated metal shutters closing up doors and windows.

The people who lived here were scared, and rightly so.  There was a huge Hyperion complex within shooting distance, and on an adjacent outcrop a giant mortar cannon was pointed directly at Overlook.  Why stay?  What could there possibly be here that was worth living in fear like this?

 

“I don’t see anything that looks like transport to the moon base.”    Maya leaned against the cool metal wall of a nearby house.  There was a New-U station and a comms beacon near to a huge grinding recycler that looked like it hadn’t been used in years.

Sophis shot her a vicious look.  If had ever been unclear that he no longer had a fondness for her it was certainly clear now.  That look said, _if I didn’t need you, Jack could have you or I’d kill you myself._   He still didn’t see that this was one giant clusterfuck just waiting to happen.

The comms beacon whirred to life under his hands, sending a stream of electronic pips and clicks up into the atmosphere.  Sophis stood back to address his gathering flock.

“Gather round!”  He beckoned the dishevelled rabble forward.  “Our patience is about to be repaid, your loyalty rewarded.  Are we not the first breaths of wind on which The Storm rides?  Are we not the means of its arrival?”

Maya had no patience for the preaching, proclaiming and self-righteous claptrap she thought she’d left behind a year ago.  Trying to zone it out she looked a little closer at her surroundings.  A curtain twitched in a nearby house, a disfigured child perhaps or an old woman.  It was heartening that people might live to a ripe old age in these parts, but it was unlikely.

“We have endured hardship, have we not, my fellow believers?”  There were murmurs of agreement in the group, the injured nodding more than the rest.  “We have been tested, our resolve pushed to breaking, but did we retreat?  Nay!  We fought on!”

The ongoing pippity-pip and clickity-clack of the beacon had become a noise she barely registered until its tone changed.

“Now we have our siren back, Athenas will bow our most reverent laws and…”

“Stand trial!”  Kitty faced-off against her guardian.  “You said she…”

“We shall claim back our lands!”  Sophis raised his voice louder to overshadow the young siren.  “And rise to dominate other planets, bringing onwards the Impending Storm and…”

“Yeeeaaahhhh, about that…”  The smarmy voice of handsome Jack echoed from the beacon.  “Can’t let you do that, kiddos.  You see, I need that siren aaaaannnndd you’re going to give her to me or you’re all gonna die.” 

Maya was alert, reaching for weapons she didn’t have, ready to use a power that had been turned against her.  She was blunted, useless.

 

The first of the moonshots to touch down were clusters of BUL and GUN loaders landing directly on the plateau of Overlook and the slope to the valley, cutting off any possibility of retreat.  They crashed into the abandoned houses, furthering their destruction as they unfolded and smashed through the rubble to get to their targets.  Some landed directly in the centre of town, unpacking and directing their angry red eyes at the group of monks amassed just to the side of the ring of houses that signified the town square.

No shots had been fired yet but the loaders advanced menacingly.  There was no escape for any of them.  The wounded and the able-bodied were surrounded together and there was nothing she could do.  With her power she could clear them a path to escape, she could at least buy them some time.

It was inevitable.  Sophis’s options were to surrender and let Jack take her, or to fight, die and for Jack to take her anyway.  If they surrendered maybe Jack wouldn’t find out about Kitty, maybe she’d survive.

“You gave your word!”  Sophis shouted when the loaders had stopped advancing and he’d had a second to compose himself.

“Oh you’re gonna leave Pandora, Sophis.  I never said you’d be alive when you did.”  Jack chuckled.  “There’s still a chance you can survive this, so what’s it gonna be?”

Sophis had a look of frantic planning about him, his eyes flicking here and there as he searched in his head for answers.  The nervous lick of his lips told Maya that things were about to go from bad to worse.

“Whatever you’re planning, don’t!”  She hissed at him.  “Jack will double-cross you at every turn, that’s what he does, lies and manipulates.”  She reached to rest her hand on her old guardian’s shoulder.

“I should have broken you when I had the chance, all those years ago.”  He slapped her hand away.  “What about a trade, Jack?  I may have something to offer.”

“No!  You caaaaaa…”  Pain bloomed under her skin.  The brief moment that Sophis activated her collar had her swaying on her feet, eyes watering.

“Oh you’re a sneaky sonofabitch!”  Jacks voice was coated in something close to admiration.  “What secrets have you been keeping from me?”

Maya searched for Kitty.  She had sensibly moved away into the crowd again but her bright blonde hair made her stand out against the greys and browns of the monk’s robes, not to mention the yellow tartan pleated skirt she wore.  The girl met her gaze.  She wasn’t as naïve as Maya had first thought.  She looked defiant, ready to fight.  The girl would probably get them all killed but Maya would have done exactly the same if their roles were reversed, in fact, she’d already killed them, or thought she had.

Maya made a gun gesture with her hand, asking Kitty with her eyes.  If Maya couldn’t use her power she could certainly use a gun.  The girl nodded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On moonshots: The Hyperion moon base cannon can only moonshot to areas on the surface that it can see directly. It's accuracy is affected by the curvature of the planet, hence why Overlook was a preferable place to Jack to send The order, at the time of their arrival the moon base would be in optimal range for accuracy.


	11. Sacrifice & Sorrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sophis makes an offer and receives the gift of realisation. The storm will come but not how he planned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter, with a fair amount of internalising. Also, Handsome Jack is a giant dooshbag.

The robots held their position, and for a long moment Handsome Jack considered the deal.

Maya’s words from their camp in the Outwash circled in his mind, entwined with his doubts.  He offered silent prayer to the universe.  Was it not the will of The Storm to be born forth to cleanse all the lands of the unfaithful?  Had it not been Maya who was the chosen catalyst?  She who had been baptised in the trials of the vortex, deep in the cloisters under the temple?  He prayed and above all else, he hoped.

“ _Two_ sirens?”  Jack laughed with incredulous mirth.  “I knew you were stupid, but I hadn’t dared to hope you were THAT stupid!”

“One for each of us.”  Sophis stood straight, imbuing his aura with authority, portraying himself as the high priest he once was.  The cadence of certainty in his voice, he hoped, was a sign that he planned to honour this deal.  “The raw power of an untempered siren for your vaults, and the already broken acolyte will go back to the monastery.”

Silence stretched out for what felt like an eon, making him nervous.  Each passing moment was a moment of hope, of Jack truly considering his offer.  They could both win.  Maya had been trained for The Order, her future laid out.  She was not the angry furnace of hormones that Kitty was, pettiness and emotional instability all rolled up in inexperience. No.  Maya was cold and calculating, he’d seen that when she’d turned on them.  With the collar he could bring her within his control again, forge her into their dire mechanism of violent ends.  And Kitty?  Jack would drain her dry, if Maya had spoken the truth.  The girl would at least have a purpose of her own, one suitable for her inner rage.

Guilt slid down his gullet, slimy, like an oyster, and settled in his stomach, turning hope to nausea.  His mouth watered, bile rising.  **_NO!_** He refused to feel it.  Refused to be blamed.  This had to be done.  It was the way of things.  Sacrifices and sorrow.

 

“I have to say….”  Jack’s voice was full of amusement.  “Just when I thought I’d seen everything this pathetic planet had to offer, you come along with your hope and your weakness.  You’re all _SO_ fucking stupid.”

Jack was laughing at him.  It rolled through Sophis like thunder, cascading along his nerves, igniting his shame, fear and anger all at once.

“You gave me your word!”

“You poor misguided bastard!”  The laughter didn’t stop.  “It’s going to be an act of mercy putting you out of your misery.”  Jack’s voice became serious once more.  “Kill them all.  Bring the girls to me…  Alive.”

Static crackled as the connection was broken.  Panic flooded him with ice, seeping into his bones, drawing blood from his hands and arms.  The robots whirred into action, stomping forward with seemingly rickety gaits.

So focused on the immediate peril, he missed the blur of blue in his peripheral vision.  The first of the robots swung and hacked at anyone in their path.  Gunfire spluttered to life all around and still he could not move.

How had he gotten it so wrong?  He should have listened to her when she had warned him, but he’d been too consumed by his own need for retribution that he’d failed to see the honesty of her act.  It was no more than self-preservation that drove her, and her interests in this were aligned with his now.  He should set her free.  She could save them all, but would she?  Or would she flee and leave them for dead again?

 

A loud piercing scream brought him back to himself.  His men were dying.  There was no way they could escape this alive without help.  With the collar control in his hand he searched for swathes of blue and yellow.  The sirens were their only hope.


	12. Buzzaxe Ballad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Krieg reaches Overlook but his plan for a stealthy assault doesn't run all that smoothly. Why would you think a raging psycho with a hard-on for bloody massacre would stealth the shit out of something? For Blue..? He'd try anything!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posted 2 chapters together, this be the second.

Krieg saw the beacon’s beam breaching the atmosphere from an adjacent precipice.  He knew what that meant.  The monks had reached the village of Overlook and had alerted the moonbase of their position.  Soon the moonshots would come, and they would bring trouble.

_We already knew Hyperion were involved.  We knew it back at the Nexus, and we knew it when we saw the convoy tracks out of The Outwash.  There’s no time left now, we’ve wasted too much dilly-dallying around the landscape here.  Jack wants Maya and he’ll get her if we don’t hurry!_

The Little Man was right, they had to hurry but there was still time.

“I WILL MURDER AND MAIM!”  Krieg roared as he hopped into the buggie and revved the engine.  “MACHINE BLOOD IS NOT AS PRETTY AS THE RED RIVER, BUT I WILL BATHE IN ITS STICKINESS ALL THE SAME!”

He raced through the valley cackling until warnings from The Little Man and his own instinct prevailed.  There was a grave need for stealth here, but the urge to kill was thundering in his mind, drowning all but the loudest of his other instincts.  His plan was simple; kill them all, rescue Maya, and live to plan revenge on ‘tiny prick Jack’.

 

In a hollow near the slope up towards Overlook he dumped the buggie.  The moonshots had landed minutes ago and there was now gunfire from up in the village.  His heart hammered in his chest.  Exhilaration fuelled his desire to wear the blood of his foes.

“Gore ornaments…”  He hissed through gritted teeth as he scrambled up the cliff towards the broken ruin of an overhanging house.

There were scorch marks in the splintered wood of the wreckage where he emerged.  They had to be loaders, no other troops would survive the impact without a transport pod, and there were none.  Looking up the hill he could see the last stragglers joining the bulk of the Hyperion force.  The screams of men thrilled him, setting alight to his desire to bring death, but he had work to do before he could deal with the frock-men who took his gore maiden away.

_Steady now.  Take out as many of the machines as quickly and as quietly as you can.  Even the odds._

Krieg grinned as he crouched low, running in the shadows of the houses.  The first loader he found was standing guard outside a mostly intact concrete building.  He ripped the wires out of its neck joint and cracked its red eye with his fist causing it to beep and shudder and fall to pieces.  The house had a crate inside that was large enough for weapons.  He busted the lock and it hissed to life, plumes of gas and dust pushing out from under the lid.

_That’s a goddamn rocket launcher!  Holy hell!_   The Little Man was excited, his energy pinged around in Krieg’s head, making him dizzy.

“Quiet!  Little Man make boom-time of his own.”   He mumbled as he hefted the weapon onto his back.  There was no ammo for it but maybe he’d get lucky.

 

Krieg made quick work of the few stragglers still jittering their way towards the town square.   With fists and silent fury he tore them apart, leaving their carcases in his wake as he traversed the slope, moving from cover to cover.  More loaders were up ahead, moving around to cover exit points from the main fight, their jolting legs wobbling on the uneven ground. He wondered how they got anywhere being as rickety as they were.

He caught sight of the frock-men, bunched up in a group in the centre of the tumultuous mass, the fleshy eye of a metallic storm.  They were firing outward at the circle of BUL and GUN loaders that was closing in.

_Why are the GUN loaders not firing back?  They’re just hitting out._

Krieg doubted the robots would care too much about catching the other robots in their line of fire but for now it didn’t matter.  He swung his axe into the chassis of a robust-looking robot only to have it spin around and point dual-wielded machine guns at him.  Bullets ricocheted off the ground as he dodged sideways, swinging his axe again, this time at its head.  The SGT loader fell but not before it had drawn the attention of a larger group of other loaders, which broke off from the fight and came for him.

“NO TIME FOR SILENT NIGHT NOW!”  Krieg set his buzzaxe to spinning, walking out into the main street, confidently slapping the upper grip into his free hand.  “BRING ME YOUR FACES, BRING ME YOUR BLOOD, AND I SHALL BRING YOU OBLIVION!”

He roared louder than he had roared since he first escaped the research facility.  All the voices and all the need in him was too much to bear so he’d screamed.  Then, he’d roared in fear and pain, now he roared to bring fear.  Leaping forward he brought his axe down hard, cleaving the face-plate of another SGT loader.  He whipped the robot’s failing frame around and used the dual guns to tear through the rest of the group.  One fizzled and shuddered, heat building within the circuitry until it blew with a devastating explosion, throwing him back into the sharp pile of wreckage that was the previously defeated machines.

_GET UP!  TAKE THE PAIN!  EAT IT UP!  MAKE THEM PAY!_   The Little Man raged in his head.  _“BRING THEM DEATH!”_   He screamed against the confines of their skull.

Krieg shut his eyes.  He’d never been so close to wholeness since Hyperion tricked him into their tests.  Never had The Little Man stooped so low as to let his anger show like this.  It was peaceful in a way, that union of thought.  The only other time they’d shared anything like this was with her.  Maya.  For her, he’d make them all pay.


	13. Untouchable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maya realises she's untouchable and tries to shield the monks from the loaders. Kitty is exhausted and Sophis is a giant pussy not fit for leadership.

Maya stood in the circle of loaders with Kitty at her side, a cheap repeater in her hand.  The hollow _ratatata_ of its four-shot burst was like some strange heartbeat to her; the rhythm of their survival.

Gradually, one by one, the monks fell to the loaders.  The heavy swing of their attacks breaking skulls and arms raised defensively.  The girl did all she could.  Her power overloaded their circuits but didn’t have the same effect it did on living creatures, didn’t shut down their nerves and scramble their innards in quite the same way.

Kitty was tired.  One at a time she brought down a loader that was getting too close to the group and Maya picked off others with her gun, firing along side the remaining monks who were fighting for their lives.

“We have to scatter!”  Sophis shouted above the din.

He had panicked in the initial attack and had hidden behind his subordinates.  His strategic planning for this little venture of his had been flawed in so many ways, and Maya wasn’t about to listen to his military tactics either.

“They’re not shooting because they want me and Kitty alive.”  She scooped up an assault rifle dropped by the most recent corpse.  “If we separate they’ll mow your men down with their machine guns!  Can you not see them waiting near the edges for their opportunity?”

The assault rifle had poor accuracy, it pulled up and to the right as she fired.  Wasting bullets was not something she could afford.  Moving around the circle firing in short, more accurate, bursts she tried to cover as many of the men as possible.  With her moving amongst them the loaders were hesitant to strike.

“It’s useless!”  Sophis was wide-eyed again, and on the verge of losing it.  “We’re already dead.”

“Let me go, Sophis!  Take the leash off me now and I can save you.”  Maya stopped, arms spread in front of him just as a BUL loader was about to mash him into the ground.  Glancing over her shoulder she could see him cowering.  “I’m you’re only hope now…  Set me free!”

 

There was a lull in the fighting nearby.  It seemed like the loaders were regrouping somewhere further down the slope.  Kitty and Maya stood back-to-back with Sophis and the four remaining monks between them.  The broken bodies of Sophis’s acolytes lay strewn with the battalion of destroyed machines, no difference between them now, all just casualties in a greedy fight for power.

There were no more than fifteen loaders guarding them now.  Their bullets had run out and Kitty was almost spent, swaying on her feet, gasping for breath.  Sophis clung to the control for her collar as if it was the only thing he had left in the world, which wasn’t so far from the truth.

“Unlock me!”  Maya hissed at him.

He looked at her for a long moment, resignation relaxing his face perceptively.  When he pressed the button nothing happened.  Frantically he pressed them all.

Maya braced herself for pain but none came.  She tugged at the collar tripping a failsafe that sent an electric shock through her.   The zap and jolt made her bite her tongue, hard.

“Mother-fucking-piece-of-shit-ass-hole-I-hope-you-die!”  She spat blood out onto the ground.

The moment they’d begun to fight, Jack must have deactivated Sophis’s control device.  Without it she would never get this damn thing off.  She was as good as captured.

 

Machine gun fire filled the air with noise.  Instinctively they all braced themselves, recoiling down into half-crouches, but the bullets weren’t for them.  Someone or something was giving the Hyperion robots a whole lot of trouble.  Maya wondered if the locals had suddenly had enough and decided to fight back.  _Not likely_.  Or some huge beast had been drawn by the noise and was wreaking havoc.  She’d seen some pretty fierce looking threshers on their way from The Outwash, but they didn’t travel far from their nests.  Maybe a badass stalker?

“This could be our chance!”  Maya didn’t need to look to know that the rest of their party had no fight left in them.  The field of play had changed, however.  There was a weakness in the circle of machines.  They could escape.  “Kitty!  There!”


	14. Race Against Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maya is almost within reach. Krieg needs to destroy the beacon to prevent reinforcements, but can he do it in time? With EXP loaders bearing down on them, the field of battle has become more precarious.

_We need to regroup.  You’re hurt._

“We regroup, they regroup.”  Krieg snarled to his other self, more lucid than he had any right being, lay on the ground bleeding.

The bullet holes sang to his flesh.  They sang of heat and of a deep stinging that pulsed and throbbed with its own lifeforce.  It clawed at his body, under all the skin and bone and even the grey soup he had for brains.  It hissed at him there, with words that were more feeling.  _Tired.  Cold.  Heavy.  Dark._

Wearing his own blood was always just as much fun as wearing someone else’s, but this time felt different.  There were other things at stake.  Not just his own life.  He’d made a promise.  Made a bond.  He needed the siren.  Now she needed him.

 

Moments ago he’d seen Maya, the frock-men and the yellow girl make a break for it through a breach in the wall of loaders.  They had run to an area they had thought to be clear only to find EXP loaders blocking the way.  They were trapped again.

_Do you hear that?_

He pushed to his feet, stumbling into the cover of an old shield recycler.

“BLUUUUUUUUUUUUUEE!”  He screamed, peeking out from the huge grinder.

_That noise…_

She turned.  Her resolute face beautifully framed by windswept hair.  Dried blood and machine oil adorned her body.  Pale arms streaked with such filth he couldn’t help but grin.

_It sounds like…_

“Muscles!”  She looked so relieved for that split second.  “I’m empty.  No ammo.  No guns.”

“BEAM THEM UP!”  He took out two more GUN loaders with his shotgun and ducked back behind cover.

_Beam!_   The Little Man pushed harder against Krieg’s consciousness.

“CAN’T!”  She pointed to the thick metal band around her neck.

_Krieg listen to me._

Suddenly the noise intensified and Krieg became aware of its presence.

_That’s a signal.   Reinforcements are coming._

Maya and the frock-man were arguing even as the yellow girl zapped a loader with her puke wave.

“KRIEG!”  Maya shouted.  “GET THE BEACON!”  She waved towards the far side of the shield recycler.

_Listen to her!  We have to destroy it.  QUICKLY!_

 

Krieg dashed around the back of the grinder where he could see a raised platform on the far side.  A torpedo shaped beacon was beaming untoward into the sky.  Blocking the steps were a pair of EXP loaders and, at the top, a mechanic in an augmented framework suit.  The little meatbag was frantically drumming information into the control panel.

_Calling for back-up._   The Little Man gave Krieg a mental flash of what would happen if the coordinates and adjusted trajectory got through; waves upon waves of robots surrounding them, stomping and smashing until they were all red and dead _.  Get your ass up there and BRING THE PAIN!_

Krieg didn’t need telling twice.  His body was built to ruin and his brain craved the carnage of it all.  He scaled the recycler, heedless of its sharp jaws, and threw himself across the gap.

Axe raised in both hands as he leapt, Krieg swung it down with all his strength and the weight of his leap.  Cackling loudly through a wicked grin and the grating of his crown-mask, he brought his buzzaxe down to cleave the beacon in two.

**CLANG!**

The axe glanced off the beacon and slammed into the mechanic, ripping his body clean through the torso, rending metal and flesh simultaneously.  Blood gushed out of the meatbag’s mouth like a geyser, spurting in a haphazard fountain, surprising him more than the halving of his body.

_An undesired but no less satisfying outcome._   The Little Man said distantly.  _Isn’t it funny how they don’t notice right away that they’re dead?_

The air around the beacon shimmered with decaying activity, mocking his efforts with its delicacy.  He should have known it would be protected.

Krieg couldn’t breach the forcefield himself so he snatched up the meatbag’s mangled body by the arm.  Pushing it against the beacon, he mashed the control panel in the hopes of deactivating the shield.

_No good._

He had one grenade.  Maybe he could wrap bits of the meatbag around it and get it through.

The _blip bleep boop_ of the EXP loaders proximity alert had him rolling away instinctively.  They had both made it up onto the platform and were right where he was crouched only a second before, readying themselves to blow.

Launching himself sideways off the platform he tossed his last grenade; an explosive bouncing betty.  She hit the surface and jumped up, wobbling and fizzling until…

**BOOOOOOOOMMMM!**

The explosion threw the foremost loader backwards.  Its auto-destruct had already been initiated and it blew with an even more deafening boom than the grenade, triggering the second EXP loader to blow a second after.

Krieg hit the dirt hard, knocking the wind out of him.  His head rang and his flesh ached.  But the burning in his chest was nothing compared to the heart-sinking sound that followed; the **_THUNK_** of moonshots.

_We’re fucked._


	15. Lost & Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The beacon is down but Krieg is lost. Reinforcements arrive and Sophis tries to surrender. Jack is a smug arsehole who I really want to punch in the face.

The rusted old metal of the busted up shield grinder complained against the turning gears and crushers within.  The triple explosion had ripped through the platform, spreading chunks of smouldering metal right across the town square.  The nearest house had been shredded, its window-box garden now a smoking mess worn by the roof of its neighbour property.  Only the grinder still stood.

Maya scanned the wreckage frantically for signs of life.  Anything.  Some small movement that would tell her Krieg was alive.  She listened hard, her brain focusing past the noises of the approaching loaders and the crunching of the recycler.  A moan or a groan, just something she could recognise as his voice.

_Please!_

Tears welled up in her eyes right before her anger spiked.  He hadn’t even raged-out to save himself.

The beacon was in ruins.  That was something.  But moonshots were incoming and about to break atmosphere.

“We have to get to that recycler.”  Maya tugged Kitty away from the loaders who were trying to pen them in again.

They were only five stood against many, soon to be many more.  Six people if you included Krieg, but she didn’t know if he’d made it.  Maybe he was reconstructing.  She thought maybe she’d seen a New U nearby.

Scanning around as they moved she saw the New U was in ruins.  The blasts that had taken out the beacon had wrecked that too.

The first of the reinforcements landed at the bottom of the sloping approach to the town, cutting off their retreat once more.  They landed as a cluster and immediately begun unpacking.  The second group landed in the town square ahead of the marching EXP loaders, splitting their flow like a boulder in a river.  And through the cacophony of unpacking robots, grinder crunching and shrieking, and her pulse pounding in her ears, Maya heard the sonic booms of more moonshots entering the atmosphere.

“We’re done for.”  Sohpis whimpered as he crouched against the broken remains of the beacon platform.  “We must surrender.”

“And what’s that going to do?”  Maya hissed at him.  She heaved at a huge piece of metal, hoping to find a living, breathing psycho beneath.  “You’re as good as dead regardless.  You’ll be walking to your death.  We have to fight!”

The slab of metal would not budge.

“KRIEG!”  She called out to him, hoping beyond hope.  There were no body parts that looked like his, and very little by way of organic mess considering.

“Jack, can you hear me?”  Sophis tapped at his echo, breathing heavily.  His unsteady hands fumbling with the buttons.  “You win, we surrender.”

“You shut your goddamn mouth!”  Maya swung her fist and smacked her old guardian in the side of the head, sending him sideways into the debris pile.  “You don’t get to make any more bargains or have any say in what happens to us.”  Her eyes shone cold and bright, she could feel her power begin to flow.  Biting down her rage she feigned to strike him again, making him flinch.  “If you want to surrender, go hug one of those exploders and get the fuck out of my sight.”

“Now, now, now…”  The arrogance of that voice was palpable.  Jack.  Smarm incarnate.  “She’s got a point, you know.  I never had any intention of letting you live.”

“But we had a deal.”  Horror contorted Sophis’s face like he’d only just come to the realisation that there was no reasoning with a man like Jack, no hope for him to escape with his life by any means.

Jack was laughing, genuinely laughing.  Maya could picture tears of mirth in the megalomaniac’s eyes.

“Your _face_!”  Jack howled with laughter before gathered himself somewhat.  “Almost makes it all worthwhile.  Almost.  But…  I’m still gonna kill you, _and_ take what I want.”

“I’ll die before you take me!”  Kitty screamed into the air.

“Oh pumpkin, I didn’t do all this for you.  You’re just an unexpected extra.  I’ll take you both but if you prove to be more trouble than you’re worth then I’ll kill you myself.”

Maya could sense Kitty’s hatred growing.  Pretty soon the girl would lash out and do something that would get them all killed.

“Ignore him.”  She took the girl’s hand and guided her down to where she crouched among the rubble.  “Help me find my friend.  If he survived the blast then we might have a chance.”

 

The two remaining monks of The Order joined in, sifting for signs of life.  They had precious little time and nowhere to run except over the cliff to their deaths or into the mechanic arms of Hyperion, and loathsome Jack.

Sophis liberated a serviceable machine gun arm from a dismantled SGT loader.  “We can use this.”  He said with a placatory look on his face.

“We’ll use anything we can find.  And we need ammo!”  Maya offered a dry smile of forgiveness.  It was the best she could muster in the circumstances.

Another 2 moonshots made landfall.  Maya didn’t bother to look where.  Time was almost up.  She found 1 grenade in the rubble and Krieg’s old shield.  He’d kept it since the train, as a kind of keep sake.  That and he loved the mess it made when it depleted. A weak shield was better than no shield, and Sophis had dumped all of her gear.

Krieg’s shotgun was there under the edge of a huge pile of debris.  One of the monks pulled it free and was gripped fiercely by a huge bloody hand.  The first hand was followed by a second and soon the monk was choking, gripped by the psycho as he emerged from the junk.

Elated, she barely registered that the monk was dying.  Krieg was here.  He was alive.  He was inflicting pain.  He was her hope, rekindled.  And just as quickly as it had flared, her relief was extinguished unceremoniously by the pain of the restraint collar shocking her into submission.  Her eyes rolled in her head as she sought out Sophis.

_That traitor!_

His back was turned, and he was aiming the salvaged gun arm at the wave of loaders that were waiting patiently.

Something had changed.  Her vision swam and all sound became muffled even as she fought against the pain.  Kitty was wide-eyed and confused.  Sophis was oblivious.  Krieg had dropped the monk and was stood gawking at her, watching as she succumbed.

In the centre of the plateau, as if in slow motion, a blue dome of energy sprung to life.

“That’s right kiddos!  Daddy’s home!”


	16. The Rising Tide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the cusp of defeat the group make their final stand. Jack has the upper hand and the chances of survival are slim. Their only hope rests with Jack's need to capture the sirens alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long delay. Work, holidays, bla bla, lame excuse for not writing.

There was something innately beautiful about the striking look of pained fury on her face as she went down.  The slackening of her grimace, like the slow-motion drip and slide of wax dripping down a candle.  The dimming of the light in her eyes.  And the blood.  There was so much gore, but none of it was hers.  She was whole but broken.  No blue light pulsing over her skin.  No fight.  No power. What had they done to his Valkyrie?

The quickening of his heart was a precious combination of thrill and terror.

_Interesting.  You’ve not felt that for a long time, have you?  Fear that deep doesn’t belong in here with us.  At least, it doesn’t belong to_ you _._

Krieg snagged her up before she could crumple completely, the frock-man forgotten at his feet.

They were watching him, the yellow girl and the frock-men.  Looking between the fragile form in his arms and the mask that crowned him like a scrap king.

“What’s the plan, big guy?”  Yellow girl smirked, no doubt remembering how he sicked in his mask the first time they met.

“CRACK THE BONES!  RIP THE MEAT!”  Krieg snarled by way of a reply.

_We need to thin the opposition, get to a defensible position and come up with a plan to kill Jack._

“I WILL WEAR HIS FACE!”

“Well said, muscles.”  Maya groaned.  She wasn’t out completely.  The siren twisted in his grip until he set her down.  She clawed at her neck where the metal ring was humming and crackling more intensely now.

“I gotta get this thing off me!”

She tugged and twisted at the shiny band resting just above her clavicles.  The skin was puce pink underneath.  Irritated both by her fruitless tugging and the current now constantly flowing into her, firing her pain receptors, stripping her down to baser functions.

“AAAARRRGGGGHHHH!”  She snarled as Krieg pushed his thick fingers between the band and her skin, tugging until it zapped her again.

He could feel it fizzling sharply against his callouses.  If he could only insulate her from it.

 

“You might as well just give up.  I’m going to get what I want, and you’ll all just die pathetically anyway.  At least in giving up you’ll inconvenience me less and I might be appreciative enough to let you live out the rest of your days mining in the Ore Chasm.”  Jack was pacing back and forth securely in his ION dome.  “Who am I kidding?”  He scoffed.  “I’m done playing Mr Nice CEO.  Bring me those sirens!”

 

“Out of time, crazy man.”  The yellow girl helped Maya up onto her knees.

She suffered.  He could see it, empty and hungry behind her eyes.  She was a shade of herself.  A ghost, like her past.  Fading but not completely gone.

 

Machine gun fire briefly stuttered to life as Sophis staggered back, recoil making his arms wobble like jelly.  The advancement of the loaders had been slowed by the landing of the reinforcements.  Now the ION loaders had erected several shield domes around a cluster of smaller forms in the centre.

_We need to get through all of those loaders to get to him.  I want you to rip his arms off._

Krieg pulled the rocket launcher off his back and pushed it at Maya who was collecting herself.

“TWO BIRTHDAY CANDLES FOR THE BLOWING.”  Krieg offered her a cheeky wink.  At least that was the intention.  He’d hoped there would be more ammo than that in the scrap of the ruined loaders.

It took her a beat or two to comprehend.  Weariness giving way to fresh resolve.  She took the weapon, hefting it onto her shoulder.

 

The EXP loaders had converged again and surrounded the domes of the ION loaders.  They were a sea of death bearing down on them, waves ready to crush them into oblivion.

_Maya should…_

“Aim for the tight cluster at the right side.”  Krieg pointed to where the loaders were bottle-necked between the ION shields and the vendors.  “Monks should focus on the GUN and remaining SGT Loaders.”

_Did you..?_

Krieg grunted and tapped his temple as a warning that he was still in control.

_Thanks._

“Kitty should take the mechanics.  Living things are more susceptible to her power.”  Maya said as she slipped the scavenged grenade into Krieg’s hand.  “I’ll do what I can but Jack can take me out if he gives me a big enough jolt.”

 

Krieg felt it rising.  The bloodlust.  Itching in his brain and burning in his gut.

_Hold on to it.  Focus.  Breathe through it.  Think of Maya.  She must live._

The sweats came then.  Tickling his brow, his back and the palms of his hands.  He’d never maintained control of the rage for more than moments, fleeting seconds, faster than the first in the hourglass to fall.

The cunt in the blue bubble was talking.  Krieg no longer heard the words.  It was an abomination.  Everything blue should be hers.  He hated the pretty-faced-prick for taking it away from her, from them.  He should be red.  They should all be red.  Prick red.  Krieg was inventing new colours to later describe the blood he was going to spill.

Krieg paced, in front of the advancing robots.  What the fuck was taking so long?  They were close enough to shred with his shotgun.  Close enough for him to charge, smash, rip, bash, cleave, shatter and pulverise.

“ **HAHAHAHAUAHAHAHAAA! MUAHAHAHAHAAAAAAGHHH!** ”  Krieg’s laughter boomed out loud enough to stop the pretty-faced-prick from talking.

There was a low bang and a wooshing sound that felt to the psycho like the inhale before the plunge.  The rocket loosed and it was just in time, his patience expired as his laugh died in his throat.  He braced himself for the slaughter.

To his right, the blue wave of the siren’s hair as the rocket launcher’s recoil jerked her backward, and the frown of concentration on her face as her eyes followed the path of the projectile.  To Maya’s right, the yellow girl clenched her fists in fury, snarling, ready to fight.  And behind them all, the three frock-men let their machine gun rounds fly into the foremost BUL loaders.

Machine oil sprayed like blood and it was but the first breath of many.  Exhilarating him.  The slowdown of all but his racing heart as adrenaline flooded his system.  Each moment preserved perfectly in the thrill of his lust, like stars, eternal in the sky.  He could live these moments forever, a lifetime caught in each second.  And there was her.  Fierce.  Flawless.  Fragile.

_Time to party, big man.  Bring the red river._

“ **I’M GONNA RIP OFF YOUR FACE AND FUCK YOUR EYE HOLES**!”

_Haha!  Yeah!  Let’s do that!_


	17. Smash & Grab

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maya fails the one thing she was supposed to do. Krieg is a good boy for the first, oh, five minutes and Jack has an ace up his sleeve that they didn't see coming. How are they going to get out of this alive? Oh ye of little faith!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well this story got longer than I intended. I'm mega happy you guys are enjoying it though. Gives me fuzzy feels (^_^)

The rocket listed further to the right than she had intended.  Maybe a scratch on the casing or an imperfection in the chamber had thrown it off.  Or maybe she was just fucked.  Worn down to the bone by fatigue and pain, frustrated by the uselessness of her power.  Her shoulders slumped as she watched the rocket fly. _Failed._

“Well this is going to be easier than I thought.”  Jack taunted her.  “Though I’m starting to wonder if you’re going to be of any use to me at all since you can’t even shoot straight.  Maybe the young girl would be better after all.”  His sardonic chuckle had Maya bristling.

The rocket slammed into the wall at the side of the vending machines and exploded, showering the loaders with debris and knocking a few to the ground, but they all remained functional.

Cursing herself she reloaded the launcher and dragged it up on her shoulder once more for a Hail Mary.  Who was she kidding?  The loaders had started to separate, she’d only get a few if she succeeded this time.

“Wait!”  Sophis tugged her arm.  “Have faith.”

What was there to have faith in?  She missed.  They were far too screwed already to wait any longer.  Krieg was practically chomping at the bit, which was unusually patient for him, he’d normally be neck deep in body parts by now but he waited for something, a signal or sign, something she was oblivious to.  Or maybe he was just fucked too.

 

Then she saw it.  One EXP loader juddering and whining near the impact point.  It fizzled and smoked, a solitary cog in a precisely calibrated machine whose teeth were just too blunt, whose bevel was ever so slightly wrong.  One cog could ruin a machine

Jack saw it too.  His orders came out in panicked barks.

“Contain it!”  Jack bellowed.  “Get a dome on it!  NOW!”

 

Finally, they all noticed what Krieg had seen when he initially gave her the rocket launcher.  The loaders were packed together like sardines in places, and evenly spread in others.  Just the right amount of force in the right place and they’d go down like dominoes in a line, a shockwave coursing through nerve clusters until it seared them all.

“TOO LATE FOR ABORTIONS NOW!”  Krieg guffawed at her side, stepping slightly ahead of her just as the EXP loader blew.

The explosion was smaller than she had hoped for, localised to 3 or four loaders nearby.   They all began beeping and rattling, their pitch increasing quickly as they readied themselves to blow.  When they exploded the shock stretched further out, catching more of Jack’s metal army.  The cascade began in earnest right there, chaining throughout the sea of robots.  EXP loaders popping like popcorn in a wave all around the ION domes that protected the CEO.  Each explosion triggering the next, as they were trapped by the other loaders.

Maya began to laugh, it bubbled up and came out in a nervous giggle.  Hope warmed her chest and for the first time since the moonshots had brought Jack’s army, she felt like maybe they could win this.  Just maybe, if they took out enough of them.

 

Krieg turned back, lucidity making his eye more piercing.  It was bloodshot with his oncoming rage but there was clarity.  She’d seen him turn before, watched his composure slip as he succumbed to the bloodlust.  It was a split-second glance that held a whole conversation.  There was a part of her that grasped what that look meant.  It was half ‘ _watch me wreck this fool’_ and half ‘ _goodbye’_.  God, she hoped it wasn’t the latter.

He was gone before she could draw breath to speak, unloading corrosive shotgun rounds into anything and everything that moved.  There were plenty of robots left to destroy.

Machine gun muzzles lit up beside her.  The monks moved forward as a unit with Maya and Kitty moving with them.  She was almost proud.  Pandora was far from what they had lived on Athenas, and now they knew for sure that here, on this barren waste-world, only the strong survived.

“Just don’t shoot my psycho!”  Maya grimaced through a fresh blast of pain from the collar.  It seemed to be getting less and less effective at keeping her subdued but still rendered her phase lock null and void.  She wondered if it would do her a favour and run out of battery any time soon.  _Not likely._

 

Kitty’s phase wave was of limited use on the machines, but it did slow them down enough for Maya to run in and rip out neck joints and processors that were exposed.  She vaulted up onto the shoulders of the SGT loader that Kitty had in her power.  The girl struggled against it, sweat beading on her brow, lips pursed in concentration as she tried to control the robot and keep Maya safe.

Maya tore at its neck joint until it was exposed, she dug shards of twisted metal into the wires and tubes until positronic fluid spewed out all over her, gushing like an arterial bleed.  _Krieg would like this_.  The SGT’s arms lost power but it triggered its guns reflexively, kicking up dirt as the bullets failed to find a suitable target.  _Thank fuck for that._   It fell to pieces as she jumped down.

Returning from her smash and grab with scavenged ammo for the monks and another grenade, Maya scanned the fray for Krieg.  He was caught between two BUL loaders whose spinning blades were bearing down on him.  She was too far away to help him and couldn’t leave the monks.  What she wouldn’t give for her sniper rifle.

A fresh wave of anger at Sophis crested and ebbed against the tumultuous mix of emotions churning around inside her.  When they survived this, she was going to sleep for a week but not before she sent the monks of The Order far away from Pandora, and worked out her inevitable tension with the help of one huge bag of muscles who was currently about to become meat chunks.

She set the grenade for a 5 second fuse and tossed it hard.  It landed on the outside of their little chopper-fest where it sat patiently waiting.  If Krieg saw it, he didn’t let on.  It was far enough from him that it wouldn’t harm him, maybe ring his bell a little, but he’d be fine.  She intended it to be a distraction anyway.

 

“You think you’re untouchable don’t you, Maya?”  Jack was pissed.  He spat her name out like something foul-tasting.

“You said yourself that you wanted me alive.”  She scowled, focusing on the Krieg situation.  The grenade was just about to blow.

“You’re right, I did.”  Jack’s feigned defeat wasn’t fooling her.  “That doesn’t mean I can’t kill once, twice, hell, as many times as I want.”  His mirth trailed into malice.  “Who do you think runs the New-U?  Hmm?  It’s certainly not that inbred mother-sister-cousin-fucking filth-bag Scooter.”

_Wait, what?_

The grenade went off, turning the nearest BUL loader around just long enough for Krieg to bury his buzzaxe into its shoulder, hacking off the spinning arm.  He whooped with glee as he continued to shred the robot until he was wearing its oil like a second skin and turned on the other loader.

 

“The New-U is fucked, I won’t respawn.”  She wasn’t going to lie to herself, the thought of dying scared the shit out of her.  The thought of being captured by Jack also scared the shit out of her.  If she was captive there would always be the hope that she’d be rescued or set free.  But death was death.  _He’ll never let you go, idiot girl.  Death would be a mercy._

“Hahahaha!  Oh!  My!  God!  You really are that dumb, aren’t you?  _WOW!_   When I get you back to my super secret hide-out, I’m gonna make someone my special siren liaison just so I don’t have to deal with all of your… stupid.”  Amusement turned to revulsion.  “ _Ugh!_   I hope it’s not contagious.”

 That was it.  She’d had enough of being kidnapped, tortured, threatened, belittled and insulted.  That jerkwad’s machines had also tried to kill Krieg, and although Sophis had initially kidnapped her, he was now on her side and Jack had betrayed him.  She stepped forward, calming the urge within to rain siren-style pain all over his smug face.

A tiny voice at the back of her brain told her:  _It’s a mistake.  It’s a trap.  You’re playing into his hands.  He’ll kill them all and you’ll spend the rest of your life being drained and used until you’re nothing but rakk feed._ But if she heeded that voice every time she’d be a snivelling acolyte hiding out in the catacombs under the monastery on Athenas, or skag bait out in the wastes, instead of being a kick-ass vault hunter with more power under her skin than the likes of loathsome Jack knew what to do with.

Collar or not she’d kill that sonofabitch if she could.


	18. The Crush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack is within Krieg's grasp finally, just 1 shield left between them. Could a lucky find on the battlefield make a difference?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm super chuffed that you guys are still reading and enjoying this thing, and thanks for all the positive comments!
> 
>  
> 
> I know the chapters are pretty short but it feels right to end them with a bit of anticipation :p

The sound of metal muscles rending under his axe was music to his ears.  An off-key kind of music but the sound of killing was always fuel for the fire.  Meat was better than metal but they both bled and they both gave good pain, so Krieg conducted his concerto.

The Little Man kept nagging him.

_Check on Maya.  Is she ok?  Do they need your help?  Where’s Maya now?_

When the rushing of his own pulse in his ears didn’t drown out the internal voice, Krieg allowed himself to be pummelled in the head a few times just to make The Little Man shut his yammering.

It had been a mistake to allow The Little Man to use his vocal cords, now he wanted to talk all the damn time.

Krieg had looked out for Maya, tackling a GUN loader to the ground and cleaving its limbs off so it was no more than a nugget, squirming on the ground.  She hadn’t seen it flanking them.

“Can’t let them in the back door.”  He’d muttered to himself.  “They steal the meat pies.”

She was preoccupied.

_Jack has gotten under her skin.  She’s vulnerable._

Krieg smashed into another SGT loader, forcing it off its path towards Maya and the frock-men.  The guns came around, twisting the robot in his grasp, he lost his advantage as the scuffed arms began to crush him.

There were still too many loaders, even with the destruction of most of the EXP loaders.  They took out some of the others too but the SGT loaders were made of sturdier stuff.  It’d take a massive force to bring them down.

Ribs popped like new year firecrackers.  The noise reached his brain echoed through his chest cavity and carried along bone, until it was like popping candy in his head.  The pain was peaking, and he struggled for breath, feeling liquid rising with each exhale.

_The red river._

But things were wrong, it wasn’t part of the plan.  He supposed it was poetry that he be part of the river this time.  There was serenity in the thought that it would soon be over.

_Terrible pain and pureed brain._   The Little Man reminded him.  _Now suck it up, we’ve got work to do._

 

It was an easy tweak to make.  Krieg dropped his axe.  It clanged off the loader’s leg before landing blade down in the dirt.  He cackled as he pawed at his ECHO.

“Embrace.  The.  Pain…”  He forced out through a grimace-grin.  “Salt.  The.  Wound…”

The loader continued to crush him, squeezing until his health was red-lining.  Feeling the rise of anger replacing the pain and squelchy feeling inside he lifted his Jackal to the SGT’s eye.  BOOM!  The round exploded the loader’s face plate and dropped it to its knees.  Krieg fell with it, the additional damage from the shot pushed him right to the precipice of death.

Cackling with glee he unloaded round after round, into the line of robots protecting the dome cluster where Jack was hiding.  They went off like grenades causing splash damage that started breaking down the outer domes.

Bullets had started flying now in all directions, the loaders were shooting indiscriminately, even the sirens were targets.

Out of shotgun rounds, Krieg scooped up his buzzaxe and rushed into the fray.  The strength of his swing cleaved limb and life.  If you can call robots alive.  Busting through the weakened dome he shredded the ION loader within, creating an access to Jack’s protective shield.

Through the blue he looked plasticky, hardly real.  But his hatred was real enough, he sneered and shouted to reform the line, taking pot shots at Krieg which only succeeded in prolonging his rampage.

 

“MUSCLES!”  Maya called to him.  “Little help?!”

One of the frock-men was down, bleeding out amongst the carnage of bodies and busted up metal.  Maya was on her knees, red glistening up her arms, hands gripping tight onto the meat-bag’s neck as she tried to save him.

“Toss me that loot!”   She barked.

Now wasn’t the time to loot shit.  Even he knew that you saved that part for the end, once all meat was still and the dust had settled.

_The ION loader!  Look!_

Well what do you know!  At his feet was a blue piece of kit.  Wasn’t a gun or a shield, or even a grenade mod but a class mod for sirens.

Krieg lowered his axe blade to the ground.  He’d never played golf before, but how hard could it be?  He chipped the mod high, arcing it over the Hyperion forces that separated them.  It landed a few feet away from Maya who reached for it, scrabbling in the dirt.

A fresh volley of bullets rained down on the group huddled together.  Maya screamed loud enough to make his scalp prickle.

She’d caught a bullet high up in the shoulder and her blood trickled down to mix with the rest, a pained look on her face.  The puny shield she wore barely took any damage before it crapped out, a familiar gurgling sound bubbling up.

He knew that sound.  Treasured it once.  There was a train and some robots and a man with a sword.  Come to mention it, Maya nearly died then too.

The acid burst forth from the impact point, splashing into her hair and on her face, down her chest and arm.  The lights on her collar were going haywire, it looked like Jack was trying to bring her down but it wasn’t working as fast as it should.  She was fighting it.

Krieg used his last stack of melee boost to hack into the eye of another SGT loader before it could get between him and Jack’s shield.  He couldn’t learn to _love_ the sound of crumpling robot but…

Pain bloomed in his lower back.  The impact point of the pneumatic punching arm of one of those engineers was precise, it ripped into his spine and brought him down.  On his knees fighting for his life he watched in horror as Maya slumped forward too.  Motionless.

“Two for the price of one!”  Jack drawled.  “Collect the sirens and bring me a martini.”


	19. Tempest Rising

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maya and Krieg are down, and Kitty is subdued. Jack has the upper hand, but really when had he not? Things are not looking good for the allies.
> 
> A game changer comes in a painfully obvious way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for the comments and kudos, I'm totally thrilled you guys keep reading.  
> I wish you could see this as it is in my head - I'm pretty sure I'm not telling it right.
> 
> Side note: Character death incoming.

The pain from the collar almost crippled her.  She nearly lost the fight, struggling to maintain consciousness, pushing her focus away from the searing wave that engulfed her body in what she described internally as _ohmyfuckinggodwhatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuuuuuck!_

Kitty.  The poor young girl was defending them but she’d became separated from the monks.  One had already been shot down, he lay dead atop a fizzling pile of loader parts.  Maya had tried to save him but she had nothing, no power, no meds, just a pair of hands and enough strength to stem the bleeding for a little while.  It wasn’t enough.  Even the lucky find of a class mod had been a disappointment, it had no team healing or healing of any kind.  There was nothing to help save her friends.

The whole scene was carnage.  Broken machines mixed with the bloodied corpses of Sophis’s acolytes.  All signalling the completeness of her failure, and in the middle of it all was the man who would see her meet that doom.  Jack.

The bullet that tagged her high in the shoulder shattered her shield and sent throbbing hot bursts of fresh, new, pain through her body.  The acid burst that followed did nothing but dissolve the pile of broken loaders she crouched in.

Her head swam, tears prickling her eyes.  The white glints of ammo packs that littered the battlefield only served to streak her vision, glaring, disorientating.  She steadied herself; deep breath in, slow breath out.

On her hands and knees now she panted in an effort to beat back the pain.  It wouldn’t be long now before it overwhelmed her.  She needed to help her friends but was useless right now.

 

Maya watched Krieg bring down SGT after SGT with his shotgun and then with his buzzaxe.  He was taking damage, no shield.  It was unsustainable.

Her moment of panic when Krieg dropped to his knees was quickly shut down by a sickening wave of despair.  Pain bloomed to the forefront of her mind once more, crippling her to all else but submission.  She fell forward, face colliding with something dead and soft.

_Still warm._   She thought, as her nerves began to shut down.  _This is it._

 

 

It had stopped abruptly, giving relief she would have kissed even Jack for.  Pain-free but still dazed she remained silent.  All around her the noises subsided until there was one voice.

“How’s your day goin’, buddy?”  Jack said, crunching on something, lips smacking as he talked.  “We haven’t really spoke since you decided to go back on our little dealio.  You know, the one where you betray your entire belief structure and sell your protégé into a life of torture in exchange for a very slight _maybe_ win at the end if she survives?  Yeah!  That one.”

There was a loud scream and a dull thud.

“Don’t fight it, kitten.  It’ll only hurt more if you do.”  Jack feigned sympathy.  “I gotta tell you, my day’s goin’ great!  I duped this guy into giving me this weapon, only he didn’t know I wasn’t gonna pay up, so we had a fight and you know, as fights go, it was a bit pathetic.  Anyway, it turns out that he had two of these things and he didn’t tell me.  So I killed him and took them both.”  Jack laughed long and hard.  “Ohh, that’s right, that was you!  But I haven’t quite killed you yet.”

Maya stirred.  Jack was going to kill Sophis.  He’d already subdued Kitty and Krieg was down, maybe permanently.  Her chest constricted and she stifled a sob.  There was no way out of this.  Jack thought she was unconscious, but he’d collect her eventually and the outcome would be the same, capture and torture.  She had nothing left to give but her life, so she equipped everything she had and hoped for the best.

And then she felt it, seeping into her from the earth and the air around her.  Tingling her skin, pulsing through her limbs.  Tentatively she tested the collar.  It didn’t zap her so she pulled harder until it came away in her hands. Grinning, she got to her feet.

“Ooooh and I bought a pony today, made out of diamonds.  I was gonna call it piss-for-brains in honour of you but I dunno, maybe I should give it some more thought.”  Jack was still securely in his shield dome.

_A coward to the last._   She thought.

“Here she is!  The girl of the hour.”  Jack clapped weakly.  “It’s time to kill your old mentor and make a new life for yourself as my bitch.  Whadd’ya say?”

Sophis was on his knees between a pair of engineers.

“Sure.”  She said flatly as she stepped free of the bloody debris.  “I got nothing left to fight for, right?  You killed my best friend, ruined my life, killed these poor people, you beat this young girl half to death… I can’t contend with that kind of evil.  You broke me, Jack, you win.”

“Well that’s disappointing.  Where’s the fun in that?”  He raised his gun and shot two bullets through the shield dome.

“Nooooo!”  She screamed.

The first bullet struck Sophis clean in the forehead, pitching him back into a pile of scrap metal, where he slid down into a heap, unmoving.  The second struck prone form of the psycho who shuddered one last time before exhaling heavily.

“I’m a man of my word.”  Jack said, matter of fact.  “Bring the girls, leave the last monk.  He’s got a story to tell the future generations on Athenas.  You don’t mess with Handsome Jack.”

Maya Felt her power rising, bitter and sharp.  It flowed through her, igniting her markings, filling her with a force she’d never felt before.  It licked and scorched like fire but stung and bit like frost.  Swirling inside her like a hurricane, tearing and stripping at her control, clamouring to be free.

“I’ve got a story for you.”  Maya spoke low, through gritted teeth.  “It’s about a girl who met a guy.  The guy wronged her, _big time_!  So she RIPPED HIS FUCKING FACE OFF!”  She screamed.

 

Dashing forward she lifted a group of loaders into her phase lock, fisting her hand she crushed them all.  Casting their carcases against the shield dome she watched Jack’s horrified expression as he issued orders.

They came for her then, bullets and blades all at once.  She snarled, using both hands to lift two groups of the robots, the earth and other bits of rubble floated up slowly as her power worked against gravity.  Their energy ebbed as they were crumpled in her grip.  Robots felt different to living things when she killed them.  Their life force was different, and the moment of passing was also different, more clinical, much like turning off a radio.  The newly crushed robots joined the others, crashing into Jack’s shield, making it splutter and buzz.  He couldn’t stay in there forever.

Maya rushed to kitty who was unconscious.  She trapped an engineer in her bubble of death, transferring his strength to the girl.  Kitty roused enough to understand what Maya was asking of her with her eyes.  The girl nodded.  If any of them got to escape it should be her.  She was young and had her whole life ahead of her.  If there was a chance, she should take it.

“Handsome Jack!”  Maya raised her voice, standing to confront him and the remainder of his army.  “Come face me, if you dare!”

“There aren’t enough New-U stations in the whole of Pandora to find the bits of you when I’m done.”  Jack said bitterly.

 

The onslaught was brutal.  There was no doubt in Maya’s mind that he wanted her dead now, vaults and Eridium be damned.  The funny thing was that the bullets didn’t even hurt.  The more they shot the stronger she got, her kinetic reflection working overtime, and each time she brought one of them down it topped her right back up again.  She could fall in love with this trickster mod, why hadn’t she realised it’s potential earlier?

“Stop shooting at her, you’re healing her with the goddamn bullets!”  Jack raged inside his dome.

Lifting enemies left and right she crushed them with frenzied fury, throwing them against the others.  She dodged the swinging blades of one loader, rolling out of reach she picked up Krieg’s Jackal.  He’d had no ammo, but she did.  Pumping rounds into the magazine she jumped high and rained explosive rounds down on the Hyperion forces, avoiding the splash damage with each jump.

One by one they fell to her until there were only a handful left.   She pounded Jack’s shield dome with rounds until she was empty.  There were three ION loaders in there huddled together protecting him.  And boy did he look smug.

“Come out to play.”  She said sweetly.  “I promise I won’t bite.  Much.”

Jack laughed sarcastically and continued to pace as if he was waiting on something or someone.  Maybe he had another trick up his sleeve.

In the distance a large cannon begun firing into the air.  The trajectory of the shots had them heading straight for Overlook.

“Kitty get out of here!”  Maya screamed to the girl, seeing her flee down the slope with a brown-clad form.  At least they had a chance.

“Things not looking so hot are they, baby-girl.”  Jack patronised.  “There’s still time to surrender.”

“I’d rather die!”  She spat.

“Can’t say I didn’t warn you.”


	20. Poop-Town Express

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Krieg's little pre-visit to the adjacent, cannon harbouring, outcrop proved to be prudent. Jack's missiles make landfall in Overlook but not where he expected. Krieg hitches a ride on the Poop-Town Express and arrives just in time to see Maya being a badass bitch. They discover that killing Jack is harder than it looks but with some quick thinking and at a great cost to Maya it looks like they might actually succeed.

Reconstruction via New-U felt like each nerve was being scraped with a rusty razor.  The white-hot agony coursing through him as layer upon layer of him was rebuilt was like a scream echoing through his flesh.  But none of it, not one single second of it, compared to the pain he and The Little Man remembered from the slag experiments.

Krieg emerged from the reconstruction cackling with laughter.

_Nothing but a tickle._   The Little Man flexed inside Krieg’s subconscious, testing the feel of his new brain.  He supposed he was lucky that whatever pyschosis held Krieg and himself in symbiosis was more physiological than not, otherwise it was likely that he would be scrubbed out in the reconstruction process.  _I’m here to stay._

 

Krieg was already stalking his way towards the huge cannon he’d insisted on visiting on their first pass.  Checking in at the New-U had been a precaution and luckily Handsome jack hadn’t thought to shut down or booby-trap this one.  Using the outcrop to survey Overlook had been another objective, but Krieg had really wanted to see what to expect from that cannon.

_Was that what you were doing?_    The Little Man almost felt proud.  _Never let it be said that psychos have no intelligence._

“I can’t see her anymore, she was so clear and bright, and now the blood is in my eyes and all I can see is an ocean of blood.  Its waves crash against my forehead again and again and I REALLY NEED TO LEARN HOW TO SURF!”  Krieg cackled.

_I know, big man, we can get back to her if we hurry!_

 

Up ahead, two engineers were entering data into the control panel of the cannon, no doubt ready for a surprise volley at Jack’s command.

Krieg digistructed his buzzaxe and crept up behind them.  With one swing he beheaded the first and hacked into the shoulder of the second.  The body flung sideways, both splashing fresh claret on Krieg’s freshly laundered meat bycycle.  He snatched the man up and yanked the partially severed arm clean off, beating the engineer with the dripping end of his own appendage.  Krieg beat him to death until there was nothing left but the smush of his head clinging to his battered body, lay prone in a splattering blood soup.

“NOW I FEEL MUCH MORE MYSELF!”  Krieg fisted the air in victory.  “MEEEEAAAAAAAT!

 

The cannon whirred to life, tracking and targeting.

_Quick, we have to stop it!_

“No, no, NO!”  He clunked himself in the head with his fist.  “I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

_And I thought we were getting along so well too._

 

Krieg grabbed the nearest engineer corpse, and using the metal contraption these meat bags called power armour he jammed up the cogs that turned the cannon.  The motors ground and crunched until, smoking and spitting, they sizzled to a stop.

The targeting monitor showed the impact site to be only 50 metres away from the desired target, putting it just behind and left of Jack’s position, right where the Overlook town clock stood.

“Don’t die pretty lady.”  It was like a prayer he offered up to the cosmos and hoped she’d take heed.  “Your murder machine is a-comin’”

Okay so maybe it wasn’t quite a prayer.

 

The first barrage of rockets launched and Krieg watched as the cannon reloaded, seeing how the mechanism worked.  The second volley launched and he stripped the loading arm away with an almighty heave, only to climb inside.

“ALL ABOARD THE POOP-TOWN EXPRESS!”

_You’ll get us killed, are you crazy?  Well obviously you’re crazy._   The Little Man was nervous.  _What if we die, permanently?_

“There’s no barbecue until I say there’s a barbecue!”  Krieg was beside himself giggling and grinning gleefully inside the cannon barrel.  His voice echoed around the metal barrel making him giggle more.

 

The cannon launched and Krieg screamed.  Not the manly, violent kind of scream that a hardened psychopath makes when he’s facing down death by choice, but the squealy, ear-piercing scream of a little girl.

_I promise I won’t tell._

The launch carried through the air with him as he reached break-neck speeds.  The impact had blown out his shield and obliterated half of his health, and the landing was going to break every bone in his body, but if there was a chance he could save Maya he would risk everything.

“GLORIOUS PAIN!”  He bellowed once he was over the screaming phase.

 

Ahead of him the first of the shells had just impacted the town.  His bleary eyes only caught snippets as the force of his launch had sent all his blood away from his brain and his head was rattling like a bobblehead.

The ground on the side furthest from the shield grinder lifted up in an explosion that sent dirt, machines and buildings everywhere.  The second volley shattered the clock tower and brought it down right on top of the glowing blue dome he knew Handsome Jack was hiding in.  The shield spluttered under the weight of the collapsed building and one of the three domed broke down.  The explosions rocked the whole plateau, sending Jack to his knees, and in all the destruction there was something that caught his eye.  Something bright and blue and so beautiful he thought it was an angel, but for the fury on her face.

She hovered just above the ground with debris spiralling around her like a tornado of metal and death.  Using her power, she pitched clusters of sharp metal at the domes, pushing with all her might to breach the forcefields.  The second dome blinked and stuttered under the force before breaking down with a downcycling whirr.

 

Maya caught sight of him, incoming at a different angle to the rest of the missiles, much higher and on a trajectory that would see him overshoot Overlook altogether, however that was possible, he didn’t know.

_Of course you would, you don’t weigh the same as those bombs._

She smirked as he came into view and she snatched him out of the air with her phase-lock, ready to pitch him directly at Jack’s remaining dome and destroy it.  Her expression faltered however, once her power took hold and she realised it wasn’t a missile or a machine but something alive.

Krieg felt the pull of her power against him, sapping his strength and running up his nerves into his brain.  He saw blue behind his eyes, as her pain seared him to the bone.  Cackling, he relaxed into it, feeling it ebb and flow around him.  It was pain and beauty and the most prefect hurt he had ever felt.

She dropped him to the ground, rushing forward to where he fell.  The tempest of destruction surrounding her fell away completely, leaving a debris field in a wide arc around their position.

“I dunno how you did it but boy am I glad to see you.”  Her hand was in his, pulling him to his feet.

“I LOOKED INTO THE HEART OF DARKNESS, AND I ATE IT ALLLLL!”   He cackled, earning a lazy smile from her.

“C’mon, I need your help.”

 

Krieg took his jackal from her and between them both they bombarded Jack’s final shield until it cracked and crumbled down.  She snatched up the ION loader and hurled it at Jack, who dodged and rolled, returning fire.  He was fast, running and dodging.  Krieg couldn’t tag him with a single shot and Maya couldn’t catch him with her phase-lock, the slippery fucker even managed to avoid grenade damage.

Krieg took most of the bullets as Jack frantically tried to bring him down to.  He threw his axe, missing his mark as Jack twisted out of the way, but the handle caught him on the shoulder, slowing him down enough for Maya so snag him with her power.

Krieg saw him struggle against it and feared he’d break free.  Maya was grunting, exerting herself to get him under her control.  She was losing.

“You’ll have to do better than that baby-girl!”  Jack laughed as he pushed free of her power.

Krieg ploughed into him, gripping him around the neck just as Maya’s power jumped and took hold of Krieg with a force completely unlike the first time, when he felt death brush her seductive hand against his cheek and whisper in his ear ‘it’s time’.  This time her grip was unequivocal, complete.  It chilled his spine like no other feeling, ripping and snarling at him from deep within, such a brutal force of nature she was.  She was his destruction.

 

Maya’s power coursed through Krieg and into Jack through his hands on the smug prick’s neck.  As the bubble sprung around them, Jack’s eyes went wide and his mouth fell open in shock; Maya’s strength took root.  Krieg felt his life slipping away but he held on tight, choking the life out of the bastard in his hands.

Jack tried to fight him off, but it wasn’t enough.  Krieg twisted and squeezed, and dug his fingers into Jack’s neck, determined to end him before he succumbed.  His fingernails broke the skin and blood bloomed, slicking the skin and Krieg’s fingers.  He watched it oose through his grip, listened to Jack gargling.  Whatever words were protesting against his crushed voice box, Krieg didn’t care for them but the wet sound he made was wonderful.

_Such a pretty tune._   He thought.  Or was it The Little Man?  They were one and the same at that moment, the singular goal of ‘kill jack’ uniting them just the same as their agreement to ‘protect the siren’ had brought them together in the past.

Krieg’s vision blackened but above it all he heard the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard.  Not screams of the dying or the squelch of fresh blood, not The Little Man’s memory of bird song or the sound of the rain, but the sound of sorrow and love; the quiet sobbing of a woman who was losing everything.


	21. Prick Red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Krieg's sacrifice isn't in vain, and he and Maya eventually succeed in bringing Jack down. Krieg regresses and Maya is scared he's lost forever, but she calls on The Little Man to bring him back. Krieg finally realises his artistic talent and Prick red becomes reality, he also had promises to keep, eye holes to fuck etc. And Handsome Jack plays his ace in the hole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm upping the rating to explicit here as it's a bit grim and gruesome, and I'm sure you guys know what's inevitably going to happen... if not in this chapter then in the next ;)

Maya held Krieg in her phase-lock.  She could feel him in there, his life-force was not as strong as Jacks but he held on, crushing the man with his bare hands.  She knew if she dropped them that she and Krieg would not get another chance to take Jack down.  She was going to have to kill her friend.  But he was more than that, wasn’t he?  There had been a growing affection there, on her part anyway, and even with the high possibility that he’d reconstruct at the New-U, it was breaking her heart to suck the life out of him.

There were two or three loaders left in the field but they were too damaged to pose any real threat until they got up close and personal.  The surprisingly efficient trickster mod made their bullets ineffective.

Krieg was close to death and Jack following him, too slow for her liking.  The psycho was wringing the life out of him, hands fisted around the CEO’s neck, the tendons in his wrists and neck stood in relief against his skin, muscles bulging as he throttled the piece of shit.

 

Maya held them, her power in flux.  She could feel Jack struggling against her but Krieg had willingly succumbed, his life force felt smooth in comparison to the sharp, writhing feeling of the other.  There was a closeness between her and the psycho, he’d willingly given himself to her power and she loved him for it.

A tear slipped down her cheek, breaking the seal on her stifled emotions.  A shuddering whine followed and soon she was racked with sobs that threatened to cripple her.  She couldn’t afford to let everything she’d felt since her abduction wash over her; she needed to focus.

 

Blinking her tears away she watched as Jack’s hand scrabbled with his ECHO.

“Shit!”  She hissed, flexing her power enough to draw screams from both men.  She’d pushed Krieg right to the edge with that jolt, and he needed more time to ensure Jack’s demise.  “Krieg!”  She wailed.

The psycho twitched, roaring what Maya felt was one final battle cry.  His grip seemed to slip and he struggled with Jack, tugging him closer.  To Maya’s amazement, Krieg wrapped his legs around the bastard and held him firm.  The fingers of his gun hand sunk into the flesh of Jack’s throat, causing blood to bubble out of his mouth, spurting up into Krieg’s face.  He didn’t care, the wierdo was grinning, a victorious cackle issuing forth.

Jack was keening as he succumbed.  It was the most high-pitched wailing sound she’d ever heard from any living thing.

 _Pitiful_.  Maya thought smugly as she felt Jack’s life force weaken until he was fighting for his life.

Krieg had done it, he’d outlasted the bastard.  Now all she had to do was make sure Jack couldn’t respawn somewhere or kill Krieg for a second wind.

 

Releasing her phase-lock, both men fell to the ground.  Maya dashed forward, kicking Jack’s hand away from his tinkering.

 _There’ll be no more of that._   She thought.

Hefting Krieg’s buzz-axe from the dirt, she crushed Jack’s wrist beneath her boot, crunching and grinding the ECHO device until it blinked into darkness.

Krieg’s favourite weapon was heavy and bulky but surprisingly well-balanced.  She swung it over her head with a grunt and brought it down, hard.  The wet sound it made when it struck the son-of-a-bitch high up in the arm was interesting, not at all as gruesome as she thought it would be.  Krieg loved this part of a fight the best.  Cleaving the meat, so to speak, but the psycho was crouched on the ground panting, trying to finish the job he’d started.  She’d do this for him then, satisfy the need when he was incapable.  The second blow severed the arm completely leaving Jack bleeding out; a red river gushing from his mangled shoulder.

 

With the ECHO separated from the man, she was sure Jack wouldn’t be able to save himself, but he wasn’t dead yet.  The CEO’s remaining arm flailed and flapped against Krieg’s face as he tried to fend off the hulking form of the psycho.  Krieg was straining now, one hand pushing on Jack’s face to keep him down, the other hand was wrapped around a decent chunk of the bastard’s throat.  The bloody fist glistening wetness was a hypnotic sight that kept Krieg focused on his task.  He tugged and twisted, grunting and growling until, with a wet slopping sound, Jack’s flesh gave way and separated, leaving Krieg with a handful of tracheae, voice box and artery.

A bullet to Jack’s skull would have been far more efficient but Krieg needed this.  He needed the brutality of the kill.

Krieg was ranting and jabbering to himself inanely.  It was a conversation in a language she’d never heard, if it even was one, but he played both sides as he argued with himself.  Pumped and pacing he thrust the bloody handful around as if punctuating his argument.  He suddenly lunged at her when she came too close, turning at the last second as if distracted.

Maya backed away.  She’d never seen him quite like this.  Even in a full-on psychotic rage he still had enough control not to attack at her.  Chilling fear pierced her breast; she feared for her friend.

His chest heaved as he took deeper and deeper breaths before letting out a roar that echoed across the valley and back, like hundreds of Krieg’s venting their rage.  He scooped up the severed arm and beat Jack’s corpse a few times with the wet end.  Blood sprayed up, coating Krieg’s chest in a fine sheen of red.  Then he turned on the remaining Loaders.

One was crawling along the floor, its legs lost in the earlier battle.  He beat that into stillness with Jack’s arm.

Rushing the other two, he leapt, taking the first down with his weight.  He whaled on the prone machine until the arm was ragged from the beatings.  The last loader got the same treatment until, gasping for breath, Krieg frantically searched for the next thing to kill.  There was nothing left.

His eye was wild, wide and his pupil naught but a pin-prick.  His chin behind the guard of his kingly mask was covered in spittle and blood.  He’d fully regressed; maniacal and muttering to himself.  Maya’s heart broke all over again.  She didn’t want to hurt him but if it came to it, she’d take him out.  For now, she kept her distance and watched.

 

Krieg seemed to be obsessed with Jack’s body.  He’d picked it up and trailed it around with him, dragging it by the remaining arm.  The psycho kicked at things on the ground as he wandered aimlessly around the ruined town of Overlook.  Then Krieg seemed to find purpose.  He lifted the body until he had the dead man’s head in his hands and was grinding the face against his crotch, lewdly thrusting his hips and laughing.

If the situation hadn’t been so grave, Maya probably would have laughed too.  But she needed to fix this somehow.  She needed to bring him back to himself.  She couldn’t lose him, not now, not ever.

“Muscles!”  She called sweetly, hoping the sound of her voice might trigger his memory of her.

His head snapped around and he snarled, dropping Jack to the ground.  She advanced slowly and he watched her closely, his shoulders heaving with each ragged breath.

“Little Man?”  She hoped he was in there.  “I need you.”  He was the only thing keeping Krieg tethered to the shambles of sanity that she’d grown to love.  If The Little Man couldn’t bring him back then all was lost.

 

Krieg twitched and shook his head.  Growling, he smacked himself in the temple.  When that didn’t work he repeatedly punched himself until he was on his knees, clawing at his head in an effort to strip away the other voice.

“Jack’s dead.”  Maya said, still approaching.  “You saved me.  I’m here.  We’re safe.”

Taking the risk she knelt close enough to touch him, stretching her hand out, offering him a touch.  Blue fire rippled through her markings, ready to heal.

His hand on her throat was sudden.  The other she managed to catch at the wrist, his weakened state against her strength was manageable.  He squeezed her neck but not tight enough to damage her, yet.  His eye searched her face, pupil expanding and contracting as the fight for control went on in his head.  She needed him to see her.  Needed him to remember her.

She guided his hand between her legs, the fabric of her trousers between them but surely he’d remember the feel of her.  His hand on her throat tightened and he drew her closer, tongue dragging across his lips.  Was he remembering her taste?

Between her legs his hand cupped her mound, pleasant pressure drawing a sigh from her.  She closed her eyes and wriggled against his hand.  She missed him, and their excitement fuelled moments of lust.

Suddenly his pupil blew out and his jaw slackened.

“Blue.”  He whispered with reverence.

“I’m here, big guy.”  She rested her hand on the arm that was poised, ready to choke her.  Krieg’s grip opened but he didn’t let go.  His other hand stroked her just as she’d asked of him in what now felt like a previous life.

She could feel the heat building.  It started as a pleasant tingle that had her clenching, increasing the intensity until she began to think that this wasn’t the worst idea in the world.  The friction of clothes against her sex as his fingers drew circles in the space between her thighs had her moaning.  Just a tiny moan, that was all.

“Sweet meats!”  He said, sighing.

She slid her hand up his taught arm, across his beefy shoulder and up his neck.  She slipped her fingers under the grating of his mask and touched his cheek gently.  He watched her face and she thought she saw the corner of his mouth curl in a shy smile.

The moment her power flowed his hands fell away from her.  His eye rolled back and closed and he groaned so sexually she couldn’t help but laugh.  Healing energy pulsed through her fingers, penetrating him to the core and he looked like a man in the midst of salvation; utter peace personified. 

Maya felt such relief she wept.  She’d never cried happy tears before but there was a first time for everything.  She was safe.  Krieg was safe and back from the brink of regression.  Jack was dead.  Kitty had escaped; she hoped the girl and her brown-clad companion had made it to safety.  And there was loot!

In the failing light, surrounded by such carnage, death and destruction, she was thankful for her life and for the man who had risked his to rescue her.  So many had died; the monks of The Order, Sophis, the people at The Four Winds.  Maya would remember them all and maybe weep but for now they needed to disappear.

 

Maya let her hand fall from Krieg’s face.  He snapped out of his trance, head turning as he surveyed the scene.

“POUNDS OF FLESH!”  He grunted, getting to his feet.

“We did it!  We killed Jack!”  It was hard to keep the excitement out of her voice.  It wasn’t every day you killed the scourge of Pandora and lived to talk about it.

Krieg crouched by Jack’s corpse.  “I swallowed your soul.”  He said, prodding the body with disgust.

“You ripped it out, chewed it up, and ate it.”

Krieg looked at her, still dazed and a little out of it, before he became distracted by his gory hands.  “Prick red.”  He sighed as if awestruck.

She didn’t know what to say so she just watched him come back to himself.  The realisation that she’d almost lost him to his madness was a wake-up call.  He was walking a thin line between functional madness and absolutely fathomless and murderous insanity, and she was right there holding his hand as he balanced between the two.  She supposed that made her bat-shit-crazy too.

Krieg seemed to jolt himself, no longer content to stare at what he would call gore-ornaments.  He loomed further over the corpse, turning its face with his bloodied hand.

“Promises to keep.”  He muttered, lifting the curved blade of his buzz-axe to the dead man’s face.

Krieg delicately sliced into the skin, drawing the blade around.  The care he took with the huge weapon was something Maya had never seen from him.  He scraped it against the bone like he was peeling an apple, then she realised that was _exactly_ what he was doing; he was peeling Jack’s face off.

Rolling it up, Krieg stashed it in his digistruct pack.  He’d never taken a trophy before, never kept anything from a human kill other than loot, but then again, not all kills were as hard-earned as this one.

Krieg stuck his thumbs in Jack’s eye sockets and popped the eyeballs like they were grapes.  Goop oozed out as he squelched around in the cavities, clearing them out.  When Krieg unzipped his pants, Maya was frozen, she didn’t want to see but she couldn’t look away.

He pulled out his cock, already half hard, and gave himself a long stretching stroke to the tip.  She was dumbfounded, watching him take his thickness in hand and tease himself out until he was rigid and veiny and gloriously engorged.  In other circumstances, Maya might have taken control, but not here, not with him like this.

It was like Maya wasn’t there, or even if he remembered she was there he didn’t care.  Krieg _had_ promised to fuck Jack’s eye sockets but she’d thought it just a threat.

“Well, if that’s not the most fucked-up thing I’ve ever seen, I don’t know what it.”  That familiar voice sent a shot of adrenaline straight to her heart.

_Jack!  How the fuck?_

“You kids are something else.”  The CEO laughed, sounding very much alive.

Krieg roared in frustration, pitching the body down into the muck.

“Now, I’m pretty pissed you killed my favourite body-double.  Jerry will be sorely missed.”  Jack sighed.  “But credit where credit is due, you’re escaping with your lives, _this time_.  Next time our paths cross you better believe there’ll be no saving either of you.  There are many ways to skin a cat, and don’t forget… Handsome Jack always wins.  Ciao!”

Maya roared in frustration, kicking out at the bloody dirt.  That motherfucker!  How the hell did he always manage to be one step ahead?

Krieg was more than a little disappointed.  He stood over the corpse of Jerry-the-body-double, with his shoulders slumped, his head hung, and his cock softening against his trousers.  Just when Maya thought he was going to leave his member swinging free indefinitely, he took it in hand and aimed it at Jerry’s broken face and let out a powerful stream of piss.  Maya watched the piss buffet and blast the frayed tissues of Jerry’s face until Krieg was done, what felt like whole minutes later.

Giving it a cursory shake, he stowed his limp length behind his zipper and turned to her with a dejected shrug.

Maya didn’t know whether to be hot for him or shocked.  What did she expect though?  He was a psycho after all, even a relatively in control psycho.  There was no time to reflect on that notion, however, they had to get out of there right away.  Jack was on the hunt for sirens and even though Maya had thwarted his plans this time, he’d try again, and now there was one more siren here on Pandora, Jack had more chances to succeed.

“Shit!”  She hissed.  “We need to find Kitty!”


	22. Parting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maya and Krieg catch up to Kitty, who is reluctant to go back to Athenas. In fact, she downright refuses. Maya shares her loot and wisdom with the petulent girl but accepts that Kitty will do what Kitty wants and that neither her nor Krieg are responsible for the girl.
> 
> Krieg gets his wish of star-gazing and Maya selflessly refrains from jumping Krieg's bones as she so desperately needs to, which leaves her a little frustrated until Krieg makes his move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had planned on this being the last chapter but decided against it, opting instead for a final chapter of nothing but filth - which you might have to wait for XD. Sorry-not-sorry.

The girl hadn’t gone far.  Maya both blessed and cursed her for it.  Seemingly, Kitty hadn’t paid any attention to anything Maya had said to her on their journey from The Four Winds to Overlook.  The girl was still clueless as to just how dangerous Handsome Jack was.

_Unbelievable._   Maya thought.

After all that bloodshed, nearly being captured, seeing all but one of The Order’s acolytes fall, and Sophis himself.  After watching a raging badass psycho die (fair enough he came back), and Maya fall so easily to Jack, Kitty still didn’t get it.

“You have to leave Pandora.”  The older siren said to the younger.  “Jack will only succeed in capturing you, he’ll use you to open all the vaults, and you’ll wish you were dead.”

“Are _you_ leaving Pandora?”  The girl quizzed, too innocently.

“Pandora is my home now.  I have to stay.”  Maya could tell where this was going already.

“And what if he captures you again?  Wont that be the exact same thing?”  Kitty hadn’t grown from her experiences, she was still as petty as ever.

“I hear what you’re saying.  You’re young, I’m older and stronger, plus I have the big guy over there.”  She nodded at Krieg who was chasing a particularly lithe slagged stalker.  Its needle-grenades were exploding around him, covering him in the purple goop.

“Tickles.”  He giggled in an uncharacteristically high voice.

Maya couldn’t help but smile.  He was endearing in so many ways, and attractive in so many others.

“So you’re saying I’m weak?  A liability?”

“No, Kid.”  Maya groaned.  “I’m saying that I care about what happens to you.  Listen, I’m planning on taking Krieg to find some vault hunters we saw back when I first met him.  They seemed like a tough but decent bunch, and it’s better to have allies than go it alone.  Why don’t you come with us?”

Maya didn’t want to babysit but she felt obliged.  Sophis was dead and this poor girl, however annoying, had no one to truly guide her.  Maya could be a coach, at least until the girl could take care of herself.  Couldn’t she?

“No thanks.”  Kitty pursed her lips and crossed her arms.  “I don’t need a babysitter.  Me and Yonkle are gonna go it alone.”

_Yonkle?_   Maya laughed inwardly.  The last acolyte of The Order of The Impending Storm perked up when the girl mentioned his name.  He’d been focused on sharpening a tree branch into a functional spear, not that it would do him any good against the enemies of Pandora.  They really had fallen far from the structured seclusion of Athenas, the three of them, the crumbling pillars of a bygone era.

“I know you won’t listen to me but please reconsider going back to Athenas.  You’re powerful enough that you can bring life back to The Order.  _Yonkle_ can recruit new followers, and you can bring glory back to the monastery.”

“So I’m powerful enough for Athenas but I’m not powerful enough for Pandora?  Sounds to me like you don’t want me stealing your thunder, _Maya_.”  The way the girl spat her name with venom made Maya’s blood temperature raise a few degrees.

“If you’re adamant you’re going to stay, then you’ll need a few things.”  Maya sighed, refusing to bite.  She could argue around in circles with Kitty and not gain any ground.  “Camp with us tonight, there’s a couple of things I can give you that’ll help you, and if you want to you can go your own way in the morning.”

“If you’re offering free stuff we’ll just take it and go.”  The girl really had fallen right back into her bitchy petty ways.  The efforts Maya had gone to trying to keep the girl safe hadn’t made a damned bit of difference.

“Okay then.”  _Wow, business as usual then, I guess._   “It’ll take me a little while to repair Sophis’s ECHO and upgrade it with a siren’s skills tree, couple of hours maybe.”  It would be fully dark by then and she doubted Kitty would strike away from them in the dead of Pandora’s true night.

 

Reclaiming the ECHO had been easy.  Repairing it had been a touch more difficult, but after cannibalising some components from the ECHO worn by Jerry the Body Double, Maya got it functioning.  She downloaded a copy of her own siren’s interface and set to teaching Kitty how to use it.

“The ECHO also works in tandem with the digistruct pack.”  Maya said enthusiastically after explaining to Kitty about health, comms, skills and mission logs etc.  “You use the ECHO to swap any item in your pack.  It’s pretty useful.”

The girl looked disinterested but she remained silent.

Krieg huffed as if he was conversing with himself internally.  The psycho had been eying Yonkle from his place around the fire, looking maybe like he wanted to finish off the last of the monks who had had a hand in kidnapping her from their shared bed in The Four Winds.  Maya had expressly told him to let the monk live but the way the psycho huffed with himself, she could tell he was conflicted.

The big guy had also been getting restless the darker it had become.  Maya knew he wanted to go star gazing but the fire and the proximity to the Hyperion stockade created too much light pollution.  There were maybe seven or eight nights every half cycle where the sky was completely clear of residual light from Pandora’s twin suns.  Tonight they were on the sixth night of those seven or eight and Elpis, Pandora’s moon, was nowhere to be seen.  Tonight would be perfect for him.

“Here, take this.”  Maya offered the book-shaped class mod that was digistructing into her hand.  “It lets you avoid bullet damage if you set your skills right.  I can show you…”

“I can figure it our for myself.”  The girl snatched the mod away, examining it in the fire light.  “Thanks for the guns and stuff, and this.”  She said, suddenly looking sad.  “Come on, Yonkle, let’s go.”

“Wait, wait.”  Maya got to her feet.  “Krieg and I will go, you camp here tonight, it’s safe and you won’t bump into any foes if you stay put until morning.”

Rather than those two getting lost in the dark and stumbling into a nest of stalkers, it made sense for them to stay by the fire. 

Krieg followed suit eagerly.  He lurched at Yonkle who gasped, panicking the monk scrambled away.  Grieg cackled quietly to himself before stepping up beside his siren.

“You ready to get out of here, muscles?”  Maya felt a little guilty leaving the girl, but Kitty was so adamant that she go her own way without Maya, that there was no point in forcing the issue.  Krieg would really benefit from some quiet time and Maya herself felt somewhat edgy.

“Do woods eat skagg shit?”  He said, nodding.  Maya assumed that meant ‘yes’.

“Listen, I know you wanna be all independent, I get that.  Seriously.  I’ve been there and got the T-shirt, but if you ever need anything or want to team up, then you’ve got my ECHO to call.”  Maya knelt by the frowning teen.  “I’m sorry things went the way they did.  I don’t blame Sophis or anyone for kidnapping me, just please, whatever you do, you stay as far away from Handsome Jack as you possibly can.  And if you’re ever in trouble, I’ll do all I can to help you, ok?”

Maya wasn’t quite sure why she was apologising but it felt like the right thing to do.  Kitty had been swept along, willingly at first, in Sophis’s plan.  But the girl had done the right thing in helping Maya when the shit really hit the fan.  Kitty had shown a whole different side than the brat she was being now.  Maya had to believe there was hope for her.

Maya turned to leave but Krieg lingered behind a moment.

“Keep your chin up, so I can smash it with my buzzaxe.”  The psycho said, low and slow.

“I hope your mask still smells of puke.”  Kitty said spitefully.

Krieg’s cackling laughter followed him as he lumbered after the siren.

 

“She’s yellow.”  Krieg grunted after following Maya silently for several minutes.  “You know what they say about yellow people?”

“I don’t think she’s cowardly.”  Maya knew the girl was afraid but too stubborn to accept help, she also knew what it was like to resent the whole world, and even yourself.

Krieg frowned and shook his head.

“What then?”  She stopped short of the vehicle., confused by his apparent lucidity.

“Custard for blood. Yuck!”  He made a disgusted sound and shook himself free of a shiver that seemed to pass over him before he hopped into the driver seat of their salvaged buggy.

Maya couldn’t help but chuckle.  In what world was it normal for someone like Krieg to exist and for him to be offended by custard?

“I happen to like custard.”  She teased and he groaned disapprovingly which made her laugh more.

 

They made their way deep into the Highlands where the hills grew into mountains and secluded them from all light save for the lamps on the buggy and the stars.  Killing the power, Krieg hopped out, looking up in wonder at the arc of the galactic arm swooping across the night sky.  Everything else was just shades of black.  On a rocky overhang way up in the mountains, they sat in silence and watched the stars.

Maya listened.  The whole world seemed empty except for her and him.  Only the slight breeze and the sighing sound of his awestruck breaths broke the complete silence.  That and the thundering of her pulse in her ears.  Aching with need and still abuzz with the victory of survival she sat in silence, watching, unable to take this moment from him in a desperate attempt to quell some selfish need of her own.

Flopping back against the cold stone she watched the stars wheel overhead, chuckling internally each time Krieg would sigh at a shooting star or when he noticed a constellation he recognised.  She didn’t know much about space, and sure as hell didn’t recognise any of the stars.  Back on Athenas she knew some of the constellations, but Pandora was a far stretch from her old home, nothing was the same or even similar here.

She never really had friends on Athenas, only people who said they were, and she accepted that.  She never had someone care for her like the hot mess of psycho beside her cared.  And she never cared this much in return.  All of her previous life she’d been conditioned to think and feel a certain way, be cold and distant.  And while that was still a large part of her personality, she had other feelings to consider.  The psycho, for example, she had surprised herself with how attached she’d grown to him.  She’d been thinking they’d become friends with benefits, even if he probably didn’t know what that meant he had been happy to go along with it so far.  He gave her something she needed, something she craved; to feel desired and powerful but also to feel precious.  He gave her comfort, but more than that, he gave her his trust and loyalty.

 

The first signs of morning were creeping along the horizon, lightening the sky from black to Prussian blue and gradually brightening into cerulean in a cleft between two hills.  Krieg had been silent throughout the whole night, stealing furtive glances at Maya as if reassuring himself that she was still close.  Although their bodies had not touched, Maya felt the warmth of him radiating against her.  She longed to lean against the length of his body, to steal his heat and maybe steal a few moments of something else too.

She sighed.  This had been for him.  The peace and beauty up here had quieted him like nothing else ever had, that she’d seen, anyway.  Maya wondered if this was Krieg or his Little Man.  Was it a lingering habit or memory from one of his other voices, one of the long-dead ones?  She supposed it didn’t matter.

Standing beside him, she rested her hand on his shoulder.  He didn’t flinch but looked up at her more relaxed and more human than she’d had the privilege to see.

“I’m gonna pull out the canopy and get some sleep.”  She whispered as if to talk too loud would break the spell.  She didn’t want to shatter his tranquillity.

He didn’t reply but instead gripped her belt and pulled her down into his lap.  She squeaked in a most undignified way, sitting hard in his lap making him grunt.

“Or maybe I’m not.”  She smirked, a sultry smile on display.

Sat in his lap with her rear against his groin, she could feel a light stirring in him.  He simply held her against him with her back against his chest, arms tight around her as if he thought she might leave.

Maya couldn’t deny that she wanted nothing more than to turn around and straddle him.  To feel his huge hands on her breasts, her hips and between her legs.  She clenched her butt slightly, feeling him swell a little more.  With a smile, she shamelessly wriggled herself against him, hearing his breath hitch in her ear.  Soon he was a firm bulge under her and she rocked her ass against him, seeking friction.

Krieg’s hand came up to knead her breast while the other anchored her hip against him.  He thrust his pelvis up sending a sharp tingle up between her legs.  Her sighing moan made him chuckle deeply in that distinctly normal way he did when she thought The Little Man might have a bit more control of the ‘meat bicycle’.

“ _Please…_ ”  She sighed.  Beseeching.  Encouraging.  Melting with want.

Krieg stilled as a shudder ran down his body.  He seemed to twitch under her and she thought maybe he’d already slicked in his pants, but suddenly he moved, hands roaming her body.  Squeezing and pinching enough to make her moan.

Maya arched her back, pushing her breasts into his palms, grinding her backside harder against his hard-on.  _Oh god_ , she wanted him to fuck her so badly.  Taking his hand, she guided it to her heat and _damn_ if his groan wasn’t the hottest thing she’d heard in a while.  Krieg fumbled with her belt and slipped his hand into the front of her pants where he found her underwear already damp.  Circling his fingers loosely over the fabric of her panties, he went to work.  His mission; to break Maya to pieces right there in his lap.


	23. Awkward Finale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Krieg and Maya reward themselves with some slightly clumsily choreographed sex. That's what she gets for letting Krieg be in charge.
> 
> Maya decides that she likes what they have and that there will be a next time. Loosly made plans for the future draw them onwards, but first, she needs a wash.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter. Whew! This thing got so much longer than I had originally intended. But I appreciate all you guys for continuing to read, comment and giving kudos. It's been so cool to see your thoughts and feel the love :) Thanks again and enjoy!

Watching Pandora’s two suns rise after a peaceful night of star gazing with her favourite psycho was a treat.  Watching the suns rise after a night of stargazing with her favourite psycho buried up to his balls between her legs was an utter delight.

 

When he first pulled her into his lap and they’d began to fool around, she figured he’d want to move, or at least have her strip and straddle him.  Nope.  Instead he’d fumbled her pants down enough for access, dropped his fly and made it work, just like that, with her ass against his hips.  He broke her down with his hand shoved in the front of her pants.  He was good with his fingers, good to her with them too.  That was something she learned early on.  Liar's Berg.  She remembered.  It felt like a lifetime ago now.  Bandits and bullymong shit.

She chuckled at the memory.

 

The position was awkward, sure, but she was barely moving and somehow he was grinding his gloriously engorged cock right where she needed it.

At first, he held most of her weight with his hands under her ass and thighs.  With her legs clamped together he moved her around how he pleased, and she was loving every second.  But soon they both needed something more urgent and she’d braced her hands on his thighs, legs still between his, she held her own weight as she slid herself up and down his shaft.

Zippers and buckles grazed her skin and bit deep as she moved.  It didn’t detract from her pleasure, it was just a different sensation, the sharpness of the metal versus the smooth tugging of his skin between her lips.  Soon she was moaning for him to fuck her harder.

Not one to disappoint her, Krieg lay back and grabbed her hips, tugging her down onto him as he fucked up into her.  Maya throbbed around him and, gasping for breath, she came with a cry loud enough to attract stalkers.

Krieg was quick to clamp his hand over her mouth, pulling her backward until she lay flush against his chest, still grinding his hips against her, he helped her ride through her climax.

Maya might have bit him, she wasn’t sure, but something gave him the idea to push a thick finger into her mouth.  They both moaned, him from the sensual way she circled with her tongue, her from the residual taste of herself on his skin and the additional penetration.  It started up a fresh bout of movement in the psycho’s hips.

 

Positioning her legs on either side of his, she shimmied her pants down a little further, the additional wiggle threw off his momentum but he remained inside her, thrusting erratically.

 _This isn’t gonna work._   She thought.

This was the first time they’d had sex.  It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t great either.  She couldn’t complain really, she’d already come once, but Maya knew she should’ve just took control of this thing and made it good for the both of them.  He’d waited for her so long, through all the stolen moments where he’d pleasured her with his hands, all the moments she’d teased him, he’d denied himself release for whatever reason.  And now, with her lay on him, he was hunting something more precious than Eridium and they just weren’t working it right.

“Hold me up.”  She spoke sharply, cutting through the sound of his ragged breaths and grunts.

Maya planted her hands on the ground and lifted her hips up, creating space for him to thrust into.  Krieg braced both hands under her shoulder blades, fingers wrapping around her ribs, he almost cradled her in the space above him.  Her back arched acutely; chest thrust up to the heavens.

“Now fuck me.”

It was an order.  They both knew it.  She was giving him permission to fuck the living shit out of her, and she knew she’d be sore after.  She craved it, even.  That swollen ache that throbbed with every step and sway of her hips, the exquisite sting when she sat.  That was what she wanted from him.  It was a reminder that they were alive and that they were here, together.

He hesitated for a split second before getting his feet under him enough to fuck up into her.  She hadn’t given him enough space for him to slip out but with each thrust and retreat she felt the tip of his cock slide down until it was just inside her entrance, the slight sucking sound was like a farewell kiss.  Of course he wasn’t gone for long, plunging back into her with a frenzy she reflected only a psycho would be capable of.

He was brutal, pounding her so hard he stabbed her womb up into her gut.  It was so fast she could barely keep count of the strokes.  Only the repeated slap of skin against skin when his hips met her ass cheeks punctuated how relentless he was.

His cock grazed against her front wall but it was too fast with not enough friction to make a difference.

She could feel him swelling as his thrusts became even more desperate, if that was even possible.  Suddenly with one last thrust which lifted her feet off the ground, he stilled.  The tingle she felt as his cock pulsed inside her had her clenching and sitting hard when he dropped his hips to the ground.  Leaving her winded and with a diffuse pain spreading through her abdomen.  It wasn’t unpleasant.

He groaned deeply, lost in his own climax, sounding more human and less psycho as his moan trailed away into a sigh.

Her hand went to her clitoris as he squeezed her tight against him, cock still twitching until the pressure felt like trapped air.  She ground herself on his softening shaft, frantically rubbing, seeking release.  She was close but he was getting soft fast and would slip free before she finished.

His hands were on her breasts, suddenly pinching her hard nipples through her clothes.  That was the final push she needed and she came with a strangled gasp.  Her spasms pushed him free of her and he lay hot and wet against her thigh.

Maya collapsed back against his chest, gasping.

 

They were both still panting when she rolled off him, onto her knees.  The man looked broken, so many mixed emotions playing on the visible parts of his face.

There were no words.  Only a look. _That_ look.  The look that said he adored her.  The look that was a promise, he’d never leave her.

Her chest almost collapsed under the weight of it.  Her heart skipped several beats. 

A mysterious glint twinkled in his eye.

“What?”  She said, breathless from more than just the sex.

His eyes drifted down to the mess between her legs and back up to her face.  There was a lot of it, dribbling down her leg. 

Krieg seemed riveted by the slow drip of his own fluid from inside her.  The soft curl of pale blue hair on her sex did nothing to stem the flow of goop.

Suddenly he was laughing.  Not the maniacal blood-lust laugh, or the menacing cackle, not even the soft chortle that she thought might come from The Little Man.  No, this was hilarity bursting forth.  He was laughing at the mess he’d made, knowing full well she’d have to suffer it until they found somewhere safe to clean up.

“Fucking asshole!”  She exclaimed, letting the intensity of her voice drop into a bemused laugh.  She contemplated revenge.

Maya slipped her hand between her legs, grimacing at the slimy handful she pulled away.  It really was a lot.  Maybe next time she shouldn’t let him deny himself for so long.

 _Next time?_   She questioned herself.  Of course there was going to be a next time.

Slapping her wet hand on the skin of his face stopped the laughter completely.  She let her hand fall, trailing her soggy digits down his mask and neck, a poorly stifled smirk tightening her lips.  There was no way she was going to suffer the mess alone.

Krieg looked torn.  Surprise, frustration, maybe a little bit of anger washed over him until he burst out laughing again.  He rolled on the ground as uncontrollable laughter issued forth.  It was good to see him happy.

 

It seemed like Krieg might never stop laughing but with the suns both fully above the horizon they couldn’t linger here too long.  There was a stream down in the valley near The Outwash that looked clean and free of Eridium.  She could clean up there and be on their way to their next destination, wherever that was going to be.

She’d heard of a place called Sanctuary, which sounded promising.  Even more so given their recent run-in with Hyperion and their shit-bag CEO.  There was something to be said for safety in numbers but a whole bunch of vault hunters all living in one place was just a beacon for disaster.  It was worth checking out though, and she had a lead on it.  A name; Corporal Reiss.

“Come on, Muscles.”  She said shifting her hips to help adjust to the slippery sensation between her thighs.  “You’re on guard duty while I wash this crap off my cooch.”

The laughter had stopped but he didn’t respond.  Turning around, she stopped, scowling.

His mask was off and he was licking it clean.  Then he was wiping his fingers down his face, bringing the sticky combination of both their messes to his lips.  The noisy slurp of his greedy sucking was obscene.

“What the hell?”

He grinned at her.  Probably the most she’d seen of his face, ever, and she was struck silent.  Clocking her looking at him, he shoved the mask back on, and with a self-conscious huff he stood.

The question burning in her gaze must’ve filtered through somewhere in his brain because, as he clumped his way to the buggy, he glanced over his shoulder and gave her three words that made her want to cry.

 

“Tastes like chicken.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I couldn't help but go for the humour there at the end.
> 
> If you've liked this and want to read more Krieg and Maya antics then feel free to drop in on the other parts of the Poop Train Anecdotes series. I will furbish the series with as much as my brain will set free. I keep seeing people talk about Tumblr so I guess I'll be making something over there soon too, as I'd like to be able to do some of the prompts and challenges I keep missing out on. Maybe do a few requests :)
> 
> Once again, thanks for reading and all your support. This has been Part II of Poop Train Anecdotes and I have been your host, Miss Cloudy S. You've been fab. Cheers :)


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